Russia Cancels Arms-Control Talks, U.S. Says
Washington had hoped the Cairo meeting would lead to the resumption of inspections under the New START treaty
WASHINGTON—Russia has postponed arms-control talks scheduled for this week, U.S. officials said, a fresh setback to efforts to shore up the last major nuclear-weapons treaty between Washington and Moscow.
U.S. officials had hoped that the meeting, which had been scheduled for Tuesday in Cairo, would lead to the resumption of inspections under the New START treaty, which cuts long-range U.S. and Russian nuclear arms.
Those inspections have been paused since 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, though both sides have been adhering to the limits in the accord. U.S. officials said that Russia postponed the meeting without explanation while saying it would propose new dates.
A State Department spokesman said the U.S. is ready to reschedule the meeting “at the earliest possible date as resuming inspections is a priority for sustaining the treaty as an instrument of stability.” The Russian foreign ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russia’s state media TASS reported Monday that the talks would no longer take place as previously indicated, citing the foreign ministry. No explanation was given for the delay.
A senior White House official told reporters on Monday that the administration hasn’t “received a real solid answer from the Russians as to why they postponed this.”
“We’re going to be working through the embassy to try to figure out what happened here and we’d like to see it get back on the schedule as soon as possible because it’s important,” said National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby. “It’s not just important for our two nations; it’s important for the rest of the world.”
Arms-control experts expressed concern about the postponement, which comes at a time of heightened tensions between the two sides over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“It is disappointing and unprofessional that Russia has suddenly canceled a meeting it said it wanted,” said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan organization that supports arms-control accords. “It is incumbent upon Russia to show seriousness and reschedule the meeting to facilitate the resumption of New START inspections.”
President Biden backed a five-year extension of the New START treaty during his first month in office, which was agreed to by Moscow. The agreement caps the number of nuclear warheads and bombs at 1,550 and includes provisions for on-site inspections to verify its limits.
The treaty is due to expire in early 2026. However, since the invasion of Ukraine, Russian and American arms control officials haven’t met to discuss what future arms-control arrangements might take its place.
A more immediate objective for the U.S., however, has been to resume the 18 on-site inspections that each side is allowed to carry out each year under the treaty.
When the U.S. pressed to resume those inspections in August, Russia’s foreign ministry said that U.S.-driven international restrictions precluded Russian aircraft from flying Russian inspectors to American territory. American officials expressed frustration that the inspections were being delayed and said that any technical issues on how to carry out the inspections could be resolved.
The meeting Russia postponed is a session of the New START treaty’s Bilateral Consultative Commission, which was established to discuss implementation of the accord. Those meetings are generally not announced in advance, but The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that it was to be held in Egypt in late November.
While the U.S. had planned to use the meeting to push for the resumption of New START inspections, Moscow has long had its own concerns, including its claims that the American procedures don’t enable Russia to confirm that some U.S. bombers have been converted to nonnuclear use.
“The fact that a [Bilateral Consultative Commission] meeting—normally a pretty low-key technical event—got so much media attention tells you a lot about how bad U.S.-Russian relations in the nuclear sphere got,” Andrey Baklitskiy, an arms control expert at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, wrote in a tweet. “There are no other bilateral formats to talk about nuclear arms control left.”