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Russia will stick to agreed limits on nuclear missiles and keep informing the United States about changes in its deployments, a senior defense official said on Wednesday, despite the suspension of its last remaining arms control treaty with Washington.
Both chambers of Russia’s parliament voted quickly in favor of suspending Moscow’s participation in the New START treaty, rubber-stamping a decision that President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday when he accused the West of trying to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in Ukraine.
But a top defense ministry official, Major-General Yevgeny Ilyin, told the lower house, or Duma, that Russia would continue to observe agreed restrictions on nuclear delivery systems – meaning missiles and strategic bomber planes.
RIA news agency quoted Ilyin as saying Moscow would also continue to provide Washington with notifications on nuclear deployments in order “to prevent false alarms, which is important for maintaining strategic stability”.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also sounded a reassuring note. “I do not believe that the decision to suspend the New START Treaty brings us closer to nuclear war,” he said, in comments cited by the Interfax news agency.
The assurances suggested that Putin’s move would have little immediate practical impact, even if it casts doubt on the long-term future of a treaty designed to reduce nuclear risk by providing a degree of transparency and predictability to both sides.
