Russia decided to temporarily exempt the inspection activities from the facilities subject to inspection under the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START). The Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued the message at the website on 8 August. The Ministry infromed the US through diplomatic channels.
The exemption includes the appropriate facilities at which exhibitions may be conducted under the Treaty.
The MFA refers to the item 5 of Section 1 of Part Five of the Protocol to the Treaty, which allows such steps. This is how it is formulated in the document: "In exceptional cases, and for purposes not inconsistent with the Treaty, the inspected Party may temporarily exempt from inspection activities appropriate facilities subject to Type One or Type Two inspections and appropriate facilities at which exhibitions are to be conducted. Notification thereof shall be provided through diplomatic channels along with an explanation of the reason for such exemption from inspection activities".
The decision on exemption is referred as a compulsory, but temporary measure, which Russia had to use "due to Washington’s stubborn striving to achieve, without prior arrangement, the resetting of inspection activities on conditions that do not take into account existing realities and are creating unilateral advantages for the United States, and are de facto depriving the Russian Federation of the right to conduct inspections on American territory". The declared goal is "to bring an end to this unacceptable situation and ensure the functioning of all mechanisms in the Treaty in strict conformity with the principles of parity and equality of the parties"
Dmitry Stefanovich, a Research Fellow of Center for International Security, IMEMO RAS, highlights and welcomes the transparency of the Russian party and the fact of the publicly made announcement , because "the broad public is not always informed about such decisions". He writes that the main reason for the decision might be an American attempt to restore the inspections which had been paused since 2020.
According to the Russia's MFA announcement, the principles of the Treaty are not being observed, as they were implied. Sanctions imposed on Russia since the beginning of the special military operation are considered as one of the reasons for the current state of affairs. Thus normal airflights between Russia and the US have been suspended while the air space over US ally and partner countries is closed to Russian aircraft carrying Russian groups of inspectors to ports of entry on American territory. Additional difficulties - are thougher visa requirements in transit countries along potential routes. The MFA clarifies that "there are no similar restrictions for US inspectors coming to Russia". Until the aforementioned problems are solved it is "premature to resume inspection activities under the Treaty, as the United States insists". The MFA considers attempts to artificially expedite the resumption of inspection activities under the Treaty as counterproductive measures.
Stefanovich assumes that Russia would rather formalize the inspection activities resumption, taking all the new circumstances into consideration, "for example by making respective decisions at the Bilateral Consultative Commission meeting, which are also paused".
"It is hard to suppose what is going to happen, - Stefanovich comments, - On the one hand, we have been working without these inspections since spring 2020, although our partners would like to see Avangard (once more) and Sarmat missiles. There is also something worth seeing for the Russian party as well. It is necessary for the final resolution of contradictions on Trident launchers deduced from the count, and so on. The notifications work properly, there are no restrictions for national technical means and the parties were re;atively satisfied with that. The main problem is that sooner or later we might want to see the new American "toys", like Raider bomber, Columbia SSBN, Sentinel ICBM. The only thing we can do now - is to hope that everyone will keep their sanity".
The MFA stresses that "successful resolution of these problems would make it possible to return to the full application of the verification mechanisms under the Treaty".
"Russia is fully committed to the observance of the provisions of the Treaty, something we consider to be a very important instrument in maintaining international security and stability. We highly value its unique role in ensuring the necessary transparency and predictability in relations between Russia and the United States in the critical area of nuclear missiles," -Russian ministry states.
