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Putin hurts arms control but nuclear risk remote: experts
President Vladimir Putin's announcement that he was halting cooperation under the New START treaty should be understood as another attempt to put pressure on Western countries supplying Ukraine with weapons and money as it fights the Russian invasion, they added.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual state of the nation address at the Gostiny Dvor conference centre in central Moscow on February 21, 2023.
(AFP/Sergei SAVOSTYANOV )
R
ussia's step back from a key arms control treaty is a blow to efforts to cap nuclear stockpiles, but does not immediately heighten the risk of nuclear war, experts said Tuesday.
President Vladimir Putin's announcement that he was halting cooperation under the New START treaty should be understood as another attempt to put pressure on Western countries supplying Ukraine with weapons and money as it fights the Russian invasion, they added.
Former US president Barack Obama signed the deal in 2010 with Russia's then-president Dmitry Medvedev, with the US seeing it as part of a friendlier reset with the Kremlin.
After being renewed in 2021, it is set to run until 2026.
The accord restricts the former Cold War rivals to a maximum of 1,550 deployed offensive strategic warheads each, a cut of about 30 percent from a limit set in 2002, and 800 launchers and bombers -- still enough to blow up the world many times over.
Putin told an audience of political elites that while Russia was stepping away from participation in the treaty, it was not actually tearing the deal up.
Putin accused the United States of turning the war into a global conflict and announced the suspension of Russia's participation in the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). The foreign ministry later said Moscow intended to continue abiding by the restrictions outlined in the treaty on the number of nuclear warheads it could have deployed.
