The Russian Federation and the United States will have to attract new participants to the agreements on arms control, Britain and France are a priority, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
“In the long term, it will not be possible to bypass the issue of expanding the membership of the arms control agreements. The highest priority seems to be the involvement of the UK and France. They closely coordinate military nuclear policy with Washington within the framework of the NATO alliance. This issue has acquired particular urgency in the light of the recent London’s decision to increase the maximum level of nuclear warheads by 40%, to 260 units”, – Antonov said.
There is a START-3 agreement between the Russian Federation and the United States, which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 for each side, but the agreement does not limit the nuclear warheads in service with Washington’s allies.
The previous administration of Donald Trump offered to involve China in the Russian-American talks to strategic stability, but Beijing said it was not interested in this.
In Geneva on Wednesday, Russian-American talks on strategic stability will be held, the first since the summit of the heads of the two states in June