Russia and the United States traded documents on Wednesday to extend their last remaining nuclear arms control treaty days before it is due to expire, the Kremlin said.
A Kremlin readout of a phone call between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin said the two leaders voiced satisfaction with the exchange of diplomatic notes about extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Putin said on Wednesday the extension of a key nuclear pact was a positive development in reducing global tensions.
“No doubt it is a step in the right direction,” Putin said at the World Economic Forum summit being held virtually this year.
But he also warned: “The situation can still develop unpredictably and uncontrollably if we sit on our hands.”
Earlier on Wednesday, 399 Russian lawmakers in Russian parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, voted in favor of extending the agreement, with no votes against or abstentions. The upper house ratified the treaty extension later on the same day.
The upper house speaker, Valentina Matvienko, said after the vote that the decision to extend the pact shows that Russia and the US can reach agreements on major issues despite the tensions between them.
New START expires on February 5.
After taking office last week, Biden proposed extending the treaty for five years, and the Kremlin quickly welcomed the offer.
The treaty, signed in 2010 by presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance.
Biden indicated during the campaign that he favored the preservation of the New START treaty, which was negotiated during his tenure as US vice president.
Russia has long proposed to prolong the pact without any conditions or changes, but the Trump administration waited until last year to start talks and made the extension contingent on a set of demands.
The talks postponed, and months of bargaining have failed to narrow differences.
After Moscow and Washington withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, New START is the only remaining nuclear arms control deal between the two Cold War foes.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, praised “the businesslike, no-nonsense decision” to extend the treaty, saying it would help curtail the arms race and “create the potential for more ambitious steps to reduce the nuclear danger and move us closer to a world without nuclear weapons.”
“New START extension should be just the beginning and not the end of US and Russian nuclear disarmament diplomacy,” Kimball said in a statement.
“Both countries have a special responsibility and a national interest in reducing their bloated, costly, and deadly nuclear stockpiles.”
This month, Russia said that it would follow the US to pull out of the Open Skies Treaty, which allowed surveillance flights over military facilities to help build trust and transparency between Russia and the West.
The Kremlin said Putin and Biden discussed the Open Skies pact along with other issues during their Tuesday call.