A senior Russian diplomat indicated this week the government has no interest in a potential U.S. offer of sanctions relief as a sweetener for nuclear arms reductions.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office on Friday, suggested such a proposal in a recent interview with the London Times: “They have sanctions on Russia — let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia. For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Monday there should be no connection between the two issues, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.
“Sanctions are not a subject for dialogue,” Ryabkov said. “We have never discussed any criteria for the listing of sanctions and are not doing it now. All these sanctions were introduced under contrived and illegitimate pretexts.”
Russia has been under heightened sanctions from the United States and partner nations since 2014, following the Putin government’s incursion into Crimea and involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
The United States and Russia are about a year away from the deadline to meet their nuclear arms control restrictions requirements under the 2010 New START accord: deployment of no more than 1,550 strategic warheads; 700 long range ICBMs, submarine-launched ballstic missiles (SLBM), and strategic bombers; and 800 deployed and nondeployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and strategic bombers.
The Obama administration never realized its goal of additional bilateral nuclear arsenal reductions, but Ryabkov and his boss suggested the Kremlin is open to discussions with the Trump team.
“It’s one of key themes between Russia and the United States. I am convinced we will be able to restart a dialogue on strategic stability with Washington that was destroyed along with everything else by the Obama administration,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday in a Reuters article.
