Speaking following a meeting of his security council, the Russian president said a one-year extension to the 2010 New Start treaty “without conditions” offered the best chance of preserving strategic stability in the world.
“I suggest extending the current treaty without any conditions, even for a year, to have the ability to conduct substantive negotiations … and not to leave our states, and all the interested countries… without such a fundamental document,” Mr Putin said.
The move, which seemed choreographed to hand Donald Trump a much-needed PR coup before his November election, comes at the end of two weeks of frantic diplomacy between Moscow and Washington.
Earlier this week, US chief negotiator Marshall Billingslea announced that the outlines of an agreement had been reached. His opposite number in negotiations, the deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov dismissed the claims as “delusional”.
Washington’s enthusiasm for an arms control document arrived late in the day, and from many vantage points would appear to be cynically linked to the election cycle. The Trump administration has shown little passion for arms control treaties throughout its four years in office — cancelling some and leaving others to lapse. It was widely anticipated that the Obama-era New Start deal would go the same way.
New Start, signed in 2010 and expiring in February next year, remains a critical piece of arms control architecture. The document limits the number of strategic intercontinental weapons either side can possess to 1550, down from tens of thousands at the height of the Cold War.
Until September, US negotiators had been pushing for the agreement to be extended to other countries including China, and for it to include smaller, tactical nukes that form a greater proportion of Russian arsenals. The narrow timeframe of Mr Trump’s election campaign appears to have led them to drop some of those demands.
The Kremlin’s long-held position is that it is ready to agree to an unconditional five5-year extension to the treaty. Mr Putin’s offer of a short extension represents an easier sell to Republican hawks in the United States, while also covering for the possibility of the agreement lapsing in the event of post-election instability. Joe Biden has also indicated he would sign a longer extension if he wins the election.
Late on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Mr Putin had “no plans” to discuss the offer with Donald Trump — but had asked his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to seek an answer from interlocutors in Washington.
