Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the U.S. has recently put forward many additional conditions for extending the agreement, which are unacceptable to Russia.
The U.S. President’s Special Representative for Arms Control, Marshall Billingsley, and Finnish Ambassador to Washington, D.C. Mikko Hautala, discussed Thursday’s extension of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START 3). Billingsley posted the corresponding entry on Twitter.
“I am glad to see the Ambassador of Finland to the United States to discuss the agreement of the President of Russia [Vladimir] Putin on the U.S. proposal to freeze nuclear weapons and the important remaining issues that need to be resolved as part of a possible extension of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms”, – he wrote after a meeting at the State Department with the Ambassador. No other details are given.
On 5 October in Helsinki, the American Special Representative and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov held a round of consultations on strategic stability.
Hautala began his work in the USA in September, before that he was Ambassador to Moscow.