When is Russia suspending its participation in the New START nuclear program?

President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Russia would end its participation in the newly launched nuclear arms reduction treaty.

Putin, in an address to the nation, said Russia will not withdraw from the deal but will suspend its participation.

Under a major nuclear weapons control treaty, both the US and Russia are allowed to inspect each other's weapons sites, but the COVID-19 pandemic has suspended inspections since 2020. .

However, the new START treaty is still in effect, having been extended to February 4, 2026 by a previous agreement between Moscow and Washington.

US officials say Russia has consistently refused to inspect its nuclear facilities.

The New START treaty was signed in Prague in 2010, came into force the following year and was extended in 2021 for five more years just after U.S. President Joe Biden took office.

It caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

Russia has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, with close to 6,000 warheads, experts say.

A US State Department spokesman said in January that "Russia has failed to fulfill its obligations under the New START treaty to facilitate inspections on its territory."
Analysts said Russia's move meant it would become more difficult to verify continued compliance with the treaty.

"Suspension of the treaty is not equal to leaving the treaty, I assume there will be no Russian build-up above the treaty limits," Andrey Baklitskiy of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research said on Twitter.

"But there will be much fewer opportunities to verify this (only national technical means), so compliance will be disputed," he added.

In his speech, Putin said, without providing evidence, that the West was directly involved in Ukrainian attacks on bases for Russian strategic bomber planes deep inside Russian territory.


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He said NATO demands that Russia should allow inspections of its nuclear bases under the New START treaty were therefore absurd.

"The U.S. and NATO openly say that their goal is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. And what - after that, they are going to drive around our defence facilities, including the newest ones, as if nothing had happened?" Putin said.

"A week ago, I signed a decree on putting new ground-based strategic systems on combat duty. Are they going to stick their nose in there too, or what? And they think that everything is so simple? What are we going to let them in there just like that?"

"Russia's refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of US-Russian nuclear arms control."