World News | US accuses Russia of breaking nuclear arms control treaty

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 (AP) — The Biden administration charged Tuesday that Russia’s refusal to allow on-site inspections to resume is endangering the New START nuclear treaty and U.S.-Russia arms control.

The findings were presented to Congress and summarized in a State Department statement. For months, the United States had assessed with hope that the two countries would be able to salvage cooperation on limiting strategic nuclear weapons, despite heightened tensions over Russia’s war on Ukraine.

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Due to the spread of the coronavirus in March 2020, both parties suspended inspections of US and Russian military bases under the New START treaty. The US-Russia committee that oversees the treaty’s implementation last met in October 2021, but Russia then unilaterally suspended its cooperation with the treaty’s inspection provisions in August 2022 in protest of US support for Ukraine.

“Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspections deprives the United States of important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control,” the U.S. State Department said Tuesday.

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The government also accused Russia of failing to resume negotiations called for by the New START treaty.

Russia’s foreign ministry said last August that it had informed the United States that it had temporarily suspended on-site inspections required by the treaty. It said U.S. sanctions on Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine had changed the terms between the two countries, and claimed the U.S. prevented Russians from conducting their own checks on U.S. websites.

The U.S. State Department denied on Tuesday that the U.S. was preventing the Russians from conducting inspections.

It insists that U.S. and Russian nuclear arms control efforts are critical to the security of the United States, its allies and the world at large.

“In times of tension, guardrails and clarity are especially important,” the State Department said. (AP)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)