The meeting of the bilateral commission between Russia and the United States on the START Treaty or START III on nuclear disarmament that was to be held starting Tuesday in Cairo has been postponed, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported, without giving further details about the Causes. Russian diplomacy has limited itself to indicating that the meeting “it is postponed until later”.
For its part, the US Embassy in Moscow has told the Russian daily Kommersant that “The Russian side unilaterally postponed the meeting and stated that it would propose new dates.”
The meeting had been announced by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Riabkov after the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Narishkin, and CIA director William Burns boarded in Ankara. the growing nuclear risk and the international tensions derived from the Russian military intervention in Ukraine.
The US suspended the dialogue on arms control after Russia’s war intervention in Ukraine. Russia in turn informed Washington in August of its decision to ban US inspections on site of its arsenal of nuclear weapons, alleging difficulties in doing the same in the US due to Western sanctions regarding overflight permits and granting of visas to Russian officials.
In February 2021 the Russian president, Vladimir Putinand its US counterpart, Joe Bidenextended for five years the last nuclear disarmament treaty in force between the two powers, which had been signed in 2010. The New START, which specifically includes an arsenal inspection system, was to reduce the number of nuclear warheads by 30%, up to 1,550 per country.
In addition, it limited to 700 the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles, those deployed in submarines and strategic bombers equipped for nuclear weapons. It also reduced to 800 the number of intercontinental missile launchers, submarine ballistic missile launchers and nuclear-equipped strategic bombers, whether deployed or not.
