Suspension of New START opens door for Russia to ensure its own security — diplomat

MOSCOW, April 4. /TASS/. Following the suspension of its participation in the New START treaty, Russia’s options for ensuring its own security have opened up, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Tuesday.
“It [New START treaty] has not been terminated formally. It still exists on paper, but we have suspended it,” he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel. “This gave us additional possibilities to ensure our own security at a time when the Americans used or tried to use any channel, any window into our military world to collect extra information. That’s not going to happen now.”
On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) but is not withdrawing from it. The president stressed that before returning to the discussion of the extension of the New START treaty, the Russian side wants to understand how the treaty will take into account not only the United States’ arsenals but also stockpiles of other NATO nuclear powers, namely the United Kingdom and France. On March 1, the president signed a law on the suspension of Russia’s participation in the New START.