U.S. open to New START talks with Russia after both 'prepared to meet'

The United States and Russia are at odds over the last remaining major U.S.-Russia nuclear arms treaty, despite U.S. President Joe Biden's openness to discussing it.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Friday that Russia's decision to "abruptly" call off talks over the New START treaty came just four days before a session between the parties was to begin in Cairo at the end of November.

"We are disappointed by Russia’s unilateral decision," he told reporters at a State Department briefing in Washington.

"We have repeatedly emphasized that we are prepared to work constructively on their agenda items and expected them to similarly work constructively on ours," he said. "All signs indicated that both sides were prepared to meet."

Price said the U.S. remains prepared to meet with Russia to discuss all of both sides' "implementation concerns, to conduct inspections and ensure the viability of New START as a critical tool for maintaining stability between our nations with the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world."

The U.S. and Russia agreed to renew the New START Treaty for another five years in February 2021, just before it was set to expire. The treaty was extended without any changes made to it.

Moscow demands Washington 'create conditions' for new talks

Former U.S. President Donald Trump allowed the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to expire in 2019. That treaty, signed by former President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, called for banning the use of all U.S. and Soviet land-based ballistic and cruise missiles that could strike targets between 500 and 5,500 kilometers away.

Biden met with Russia's President Vladimir Putin at a Swiss-hosted summit in Geneva in July 2021 where they agreed to restore ambassadors to their postings in Moscow and Washington and to begin negotiating a replacement for the New START Treaty, which expires in 2026.

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February, however, U.S.-Russia relations have sunk to Cold War-era levels not seen in six decades, accompanied by U.S. sanctions against the Kremlin and tens of billions of dollars of U.S. economic and military aid for Kyiv.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Russia didn't see any possibility of resuming talks with Washington on the New START treaty while the U.S. is arming Ukraine. But Moscow expects the United States to facilitate a meeting of their consultative commission on New START in 2023, Russian state-owned Sputnik radio reported on Tuesday.

"We expect the United States to make good-faith efforts to create conditions for holding a session of the bilateral consultative commission in 2023 and return to full-scale implementation of all the provisions of the New START," she was quoted as saying. "In all directions we note the highest level of toxicity and hostility from Washington."