Moscow has announced that it will suspend US inspections of military sites in Russia, enabled by the New START treaty. A key Russian-American agreement signed in 2010 mutually allowed the two sides to regularly inspect the other country's military sites.
Moscow officially informed Washington on Monday that all Russian military sites covered by the New START agreement will be "temporarily exempted" from American control, the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement.
These include missile launch bases, as well as air and naval bases where nuclear missiles have previously been deployed.
"The Russian Federation is forced to resort to this measure due to the current realities, which provide unilateral benefits to the United States and deprive Russia of its right to conduct inspections on American territory."
the Russian press release pointed out.
In particular, Russian diplomacy has highlighted obstacles to Russian inspectors' travel to the US and difficulties in issuing US visas caused by Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over Russia's attack on Ukraine.
"American inspectors and their aircraft crews do not have a similar problem," the Russian statement pointed out, adding that once the above problems are resolved, Russia will immediately withdraw its decision announced on Monday.
The New START agreement, which reduces and limits the number of nuclear weapons, limited the number of installed warheads to a maximum of 1,550 per country, which represented an almost 30 percent decrease compared to the previous value set in 2002. The treaty capped the number of missiles and bombers at 800, which is still enough to destroy the Earth many times over.
The New START Treaty was extended by the parties in January 2021 for a period of five years until 2026.
According to the treaty, Moscow and Washington would mutually have the right to carry out about twenty such inspections on the territory of the other party each year.
Source: vasarnap.hu
In our opening image: a Russian Tornado-G missile is fired with a serial launcher at Ukrainian positions on an unnamed Ukrainian frontline on August 3, 2022. Image taken from a video recording. Source: MTI/EPA/Russian Ministry of Defense
