Russia has signaled that it does not want to extend the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction with the United States beyond 2013, suggesting it needs a “more modern” legal framework. Among the threat reduction work for which it is credited, the program has been responsible for the deactivation of 7,610 Russian strategic nuclear warheads, the destruction of 902 intercontinental ballistic missiles and the elimination of hundreds of warhead delivery vehicles since the effort was founded in 1991 by former Sen. Sam Nunn and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). Conditions have changed drastically since the program was created in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, with Russia less in need of financial help from the United States and more interested in protecting information about its nuclear stockpile. “We have received an offer from the American side for the next renewal of the 1992 agreement,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement, according to press reports. “Our American partners know that their proposal is not consistent with our ideas about what forms and on what basis further cooperation should be built. To this end, in particular, we need another, more modern legal framework.”
Lugar, who was defeated in an Indiana Republican primary earlier this year, emphasized in a statement that Russia was not ending the agreement, but only seeking to alter it. He said Russian Federal Space Agency officials had expressed interest in continuing work to destroy SS-19 and SS-18 missiles during recent meetings. “During my meetings with the Russian Foreign and Defense Ministries this past August—which were among the first held on the subject of the future of Nunn-Lugar in Russia—the Russian Government indicated a desire to make changes to the Nunn-Lugar Umbrella Agreement, as opposed to simply extending it,” Lugar said. “At no time did officials indicate that, at this stage of negotiation, they were intent on ending it, only amending it.”
