Russia welcomes US decision of Prolo …

Days after assuming the U.S. presidency, Biden offered to extend the only existing nuclear deal between the U.S. and Russia before it expires on February 5. The treaty limits the number of strategically deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 and 700 ballistic systems for each of the two powers on land, sea or in the air. From Russia, they welcomed the proposal. “We can only welcome the political will to extend this document,” said Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Poutine. Peskov said the renewal will depend on “the details of the proposal.” In recent months, the Russian president had spoken in favor of extending the treaty for five years, but negotiations between the two countries failed to reach an agreement.

The strategic arms reduction treaty known as New START will be extended for five years, according to White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki. “The New STAR Treaty is in the interests of the national security of the United States. This extension makes much more sense when relations with Russia are unfavorable, as is currently the case “.

As reported by the newspaper The Washington Post, the offer to extend the nuclear deal does not imply that the United States will be concessionary to Russia. “As we work with Russia, we will also endeavor to hold Russia accountable for the reckless and aggressive actions we have seen in recent months,” a senior official quoted by the newspaper said. The American Morning Newspaper also reported that Biden ordered Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, to provide him with a full report on alleged Russian interference in the 2020 election., the use of chemical weapons against the adversary Alexei Navalny and rewards for American soldiers in Afghanistan.

The Democrat’s decision has already drawn criticism from officials in the Trump administration. Marshall Billingslea, the former Republican president’s special envoy for nuclear negotiations, said in a Twitter post: “I hope that’s not true. If so, it demonstrates an impressive lack of negotiation skills.“. In another article, he wrote “a better way to approach this would have been with a short six-month extension. However, the” senior official “told the Washington post that at the time Billingslea tried to negotiate a shorter extension of the treaty with Russia’s Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov, but failed and the nuclear treaty was about to expire.

The director of the association for arms control, Daryl kimball, he said The Washington Post What a direct five-year extension would help the United States to regain “its credibility on gun control issues”While for officials interviewed by the US newspaper, a renewal of the new START treaty may provide a basis for new arms control arrangements, potentially including China. The agreement that expires on February 5 known as New START was originally signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev on April 8, 2010 in Prague. The first such agreement between the United States and Russia was called START I and was signed in 1991.

Likewise, the proposed extension of the treaty between the United States and Russia is given in a New context with the approval at the UN of the Treaty to ban nuclear weapons which entered into force on Friday. “The survivors of nuclear explosions and tests have offered tragic testimonies and have been the moral force behind this treaty. Its entry into force is a tribute to its permanent support ”, declared the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres in the official announcement of the treaty. The treaty won the approval of 50 states when it was finally ratified by Honduras in October last year, although none of the nuclear powers signed the UN treaty.

According to a report by the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), surveys carried out in Spain, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Italy found that around 80% of the population of these countries support the treaty banning nuclear weapons. The latest report released by ICAN in May 2020 showed that the United States was at the forefront of nuclear weapons spending with more than $ 35 billion of its budget allocated to nuclear weapons. In second position and with a much lower expenditure compared to the North American country, it is China with over $ 10 billion in weapons and nuclear, followed by Russia with an expenditure of almost nine billion dollars.