Key Points
- Russia wants to resume nuclear disarmament talks with the US
- Negotiations between the world’s two largest nuclear powers face a deadlock
- Trump wants to involve China in talks on nuclear arms control
MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Friday said that Russia wanted to resume nuclear disarmament talks with the US provided that the nuclear arsenals of the UK and France, the United States’ allies, are taken into account.
“We are certainly interested in starting the negotiation process as soon as possible for the sake of the people of our countries and the entire world, ” said Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov at a news briefing.
Russia’s TASS news agency quoted Peskov as saying that significant time had been lost on nuclear disarmament efforts because the US halted substantive contacts with Russia on the matter,
“The legal framework governing arms control has been severely undermined, and not by Russia’s fault. The US ended its participation in international agreements, effectively dismantling this framework,” he said.
“In the current situation, all nuclear capacities need to be taken into account. In particular, it’s impossible to hold a conversation without taking into consideration the nuclear capacities of France and the United Kingdom,” he noted, adding: “The current realities make it necessary.”
Negotiations between the world’s two largest nuclear powers face a deadlock amid escalating tensions over the Ukraine conflict. In 2023, Moscow withdrew from “New START,” the last remaining arms control agreement with Washington, following a significant breakdown in relations.
While both nations have stated they will independently comply with the treaty’s limits until 2026, no agreement on a replacement has been reached, and discussions have been stalled for months.
Trump wants China involved in talks on nuclear arms control
US President Donald Trump speaking via video to the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday said he would also want China involved in talks on nuclear arms control.
“We’d like to see denuclearisation,” Trump said, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin “really liked the idea of — of cutting way back on nuclear” during Trump’s first term in office.
“China would have come along too. China also liked it,” Trump said, warning that Beijing’s nuclear arsenal would catch up with Washington’s “at some point over the next four or five years.”
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“So, we want to see if we can denuclearise, and I think that’s very possible,” Trump said.
In 2019, the two powers exited the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, which restricted the deployment of medium-range missiles, both conventional and nuclear.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also dismissed reports of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s readiness for peace talks with Russia, stating that such claims are baseless since Zelensky has legally banned negotiations with Moscow.
