Russia blocks US arms control inspectors in blow to milestone treaty, State Department says
Joel Gehrke
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Russia is flouting its obligations under a major arms control treaty with the United States, according to State Department officials.
“Russia is not complying with its obligation under the New START Treaty to facilitate inspection activities on its territory,” a State Department spokesman said Tuesday. “Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team outlined that breakdown in a notification to key congressional leaders on Tuesday. The assessment points to the degeneration of the last major arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, after another pair of landmark pacts collapsed amid U.S. allegations that Moscow had violated the deals.
“Russia has a clear path for returning to full compliance,” the State Department spokesman said. “All Russia needs to do is allow inspection activities on its territory, just as it did for years under the New START Treaty, and meet in a session of the Bilateral Consultative Commission. There is nothing preventing Russian inspectors from traveling to the United States and conducting inspections.”
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Russia scrapped the commission meeting that was supposed to take place in Cairo in a last-minute snub designed to express displeasure with U.S. aid for Ukraine.
“Naturally, the events unfolding inside and around Ukraine in this case impact that,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, said at the time. “Arms control and the dialogue in this sphere can’t be immune to what is happening around, and the bigger picture, which is quite complicated and largely disquieting, has played a role.”
U.S. and Russian negotiators crafted the New START treaty as a mechanism to cap the number of nuclear weapons that each country can deploy. The pact, which first took effect in 2011, “provides for 18 on-site inspections per year for U.S. and Russian inspection teams,” according to the State Department. Russian officials have signaled their willingness to consider scrapping the treaty, which lapses in 2026, due to U.S. support for Ukrainian efforts to repel the Russian invasion.
“New START may well fall victim to this,” Ryabkov, said Monday. “We are ready for such a scenario.”
Ryabkov timed that warning to coincide with a meeting with Ambassador Lynne Tracy, who began her tenure as the top U.S. envoy to Russia last week. Their conversation occurred on the eve of the annual Jan. 31 deadline for the State Department to update Congress on the status of the treaty’s implementation.
“Russia’s unilateral cancellation of the BCC and refusal to restart New START inspections, another key tenet of the treaty, coupled with other statements by its government officials, at a minimum, raise serious compliance concerns regarding the Federation’s adherence to the New START Treaty,” the Republican heads of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the intelligence panel wrote to the Biden administration last week in a letter published by Financial Times. “This would occur during a uniquely dangerous time when both 2 Russia and China are expanding and modernizing their arsenals, Iran, a state sponsor of terror, continues to expand its nuclear program, and North Korea rattles its nuclear saber.”
The United States withdrew from two other Cold War-era agreements during Donald Trump’s presidency due to alleged Russian violations. One pact imposed a ban on land-based intermediate-range cruise missiles, but NATO accused Russia of developing and deploying such a weapons system despite the ban.
President Joe Biden agreed to an extension of the New START treaty in 2021, and his team hopes to avoid its full collapse.
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“The New START Treaty remains in the national security interests of the United States,” the State Department spokesman said. “It continues to constrain Russian strategic nuclear forces and provide insights into Russian forces that we would otherwise lack … To fully deliver on the promise of the treaty by ensuring it remains an instrument of stability and predictability, Russia must fully implement and comply with its obligations.”