Warsaw, (EFE).- US President Joe Biden considered this Wednesday that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has made a “big mistake” by announcing the suspension of Russia’s obligations under the START III nuclear disarmament treaty or New START.
As Biden entered the presidential palace in Warsaw for a meeting with countries on the eastern flank of NATO, a journalist asked him to react to Putin’s decision.
At first, the US president jokingly said that he “didn’t have time”; but then he paused and said, “Big mistake.”
The Russian president announced on Tuesday the suspension of his country’s compliance with START III or New START, the last nuclear disarmament treaty still in force between Russia and the United States.
Putin qualified that “Russia does not abandon, but only suspends” compliance with the treaty on the reduction of strategic offensive arms that expires in 2026, for which he blamed the United States.
Signed in 2010 by then-US and Russian presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev, New START limits the number of long-range nuclear warheads each country can have deployed to 1,550.
It also restricts the number of launch vehicles and systems Washington and Moscow can have deployed or in reserve, but its cornerstone is the verification regime the treaty establishes to ensure these limits are met.
Specifically, both the United States and Russia can carry out up to 18 inspections a year of each other’s nuclear arsenals with little time for the receiving country to prepare: technicians give 32-hour notice before arriving and then choose the site they want to examine. , which must be respected by the receiving authorities.
