Russia hopes to revive dialogue with US on New START Treaty

5 December 2018 18:16 (UTC+04:00)

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Russia expects that negotiations with the United States to extend the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START Treaty) will be revived, Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov told a briefing for foreign defense attaches on Wednesday, TASS reports.

"Hopefully, the United States will take a balanced and constructive approach to the issue and resume dialogue on prolonging the New START Treaty," he stated.

The chief of General Staff noted that Moscow continues to abide by its international obligations as far as arms control and disarmament go. "Once the deadline arrived for the New START Treaty (February 5, 2018), we fully met our obligations to reduce strategic offensive arms," he stressed.

Gerasimov also noted that "seeking to achieve the quantitative parameters set by the treaty, (our) US partners have been converting part of their strategic offensive assets (4 launchers on each of the 14 Ohio-class submarines and 41 Boeing B-52 Stratofortress) and unilaterally excluded them from list under the Treaty."

"This enables them to quickly boost the potential of their strategic offensive arms and ramp up the number of warheads by over 1,200 units," Gerasimov said.

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