Disarmament Talks between Russia and the USA Had No Results

Amid the US withdrawal from a number of arms control treaties, Moscow and Washington held consultations in Vienna. Beijing Representatives ignored the meeting. The first round of arms control negotiations between Russia and the United States, held in Vienna on Monday, June 23, did not bring concrete results. Nevertheless, the US special envoy for arms control Marshall Billingsley wrote on Twitter about the positive mood of the participants. “First round of Vienna talks very positive. Detailed discussions on full-range of nuclear topics. Technical working groups launched. Agreement in principle on second round,” he twitted. Russia was represented at the talks by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. China, as Billingsley remarked, “failed to appear” at the meeting, despite repeated invitations from the American side. China’s stance On June 10, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that China “does not intend to participate in the so-called trilateral arms control negotiations with the participation of Russia and the United States”. Beijing, according to Hua Chunying, suspects that in trying to drag China into negotiations, the White House “wants to shift responsibility to others” and distract attention from the fact that the United States has withdrawn from a number of international arms control agreements in recent years. Russia’s stance Recently, Russia has been actively seeking the resumption of disarmament negotiations. At the same time, Moscow warned against high expectations regarding   the START-3 treaty recovery aimed at further reduction in strategic offensive arms, especially against the backdrop of the recent US withdrawal from the Open Skies treaty. In May, Russian President Vladimir Putin convened the Security Council to discuss the future of both of these treaties. He criticized the United States for, as he stated, the lack of desire to engage in serious negotiations to extend the START-3 treaty, which expires on February 5, 2021. Putin emphasized then that this topic is of great importance not only for the USA and Russia, but also for the whole world. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned at the end of May that after the US presidential election in November it would be too late to negotiate an extension of START-3 and there would be a threat of an uncontrolled nuclear arms race.