Russia welcomes US offer to extend nuclear deal
Moscow … News Time
Web Desk Russia has welcomed the announcement made yesterday by the Biden administration, which called for a five-year extension of the New Start program, an arms control program. The program ends on February 5. Russia says the Kremlin is waiting for details from the United States. Speaking to reporters in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia could only welcome the political desire to expand the document. However, the spokesman said that it would depend on the details of the proposal. U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, who will be the next chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has backed the administration’s motion. Bob Menendez said that the New Start Treaty is very important for the national security of the United States. He said the agreement obliges Russia to provide concrete and verified detailed information about its strategic nuclear forces. The agreement ensures that Russia is living up to its commitments and also ensures that the United States meets its requirements for safe, advanced and effective nuclear weapons. However, Bob Menendez also said that the administration must keep a close eye on Russia, which continues to threaten the United States and its allies. “I expect a strong response from the US administration to deal with the recent cyber-attacks on the solar winds, the Kremlin’s attacks on our electoral process and its efforts to silence and assassinate political opponents,” he said.
President Joe Biden signaled during his election campaign last year that he wanted to maintain the agreement with Russia. Despite a proposal for a start treaty, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that Biden is committed to holding Russia accountable for a number of brutal and hostile actions, including the hacking of solar winds. , Interference in the last presidential election and the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. On Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the United States and Russia should extend, and expand, their agreement. “The extension of the New Start Agreement is not the end of this thing, but the beginning of our efforts to further control arms control,” he told reporters in Brussels. The agreement was signed in 2010 by then-US President Barack Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, stating that the two countries would not have more than 1,550 nuclear weapons. Former President Trump has criticized the deal, saying it has hurt the United States.
