11 Jul 2019 18:55

New START to be ineffective from 5 Feb 2021 unless extended - Slutsky

MOSCOW. July 11 (Interfax) - The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) between the United States and Russia could cease being effective from February 5, 2021, the chairman of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, Leonid Slutsky, said.

"The situation is menacing with a non-extension of the New START which expires on February 5, 2021. And that, in turn, risks causing a collapse of the whole global strategic stability system which took decades to create, including by Soviet, Russian specialists," Slutsky told journalists on Thursday.

Currently, the situation around global strategic stability is very serious: the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, just as it quit the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, he said.

It is the U.S. who today undermines strategic stability but there is no dialogue between it and Russia, he said.

"This dialogue has to resume somehow bit by bit," Slutsky said.