Mutual inspections had been suspended as a precautionary health measure since the start of the Covid pandemic, but a foreign ministry statement on Monday added yet another reason why Russia is unwilling to restart them. He claimed that US sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine prevented Russian inspectors from traveling to the US. “There are no similar obstacles to the arrival of American inspectors in Russia,” the statement said. “The Russian Foreign Ministry raised this issue with the relevant countries, but received no response.” The US State Department did not immediately respond to the claim that the sanctions created an imbalance when it came to nuclear weapons inspections. A spokesman said: “The United States is committed to the implementation of the New Start Treaty, but we are keeping confidential the discussions between the parties regarding the implementation of the treaty.” The treaty, which limits each country’s deployable strategic warheads to 1,550 and imposes limits on delivery systems, was extended for five years in February 2021. It is the last remaining arms control treaty in force between the US and Russia, and the inspection and The verification clauses are widely seen as crucial to building mutual trust and avoiding miscalculations in the nuclear sector. “At a time when U.S.-Russian relations are strained, anything that undermines stability and nuclear predictability is a cause for concern,” said Jon Wolfsthal, who was senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the administration’s National Security Council Obama. “However, we continue to share a large amount of information with Russia about its nuclear weapons. The hope is that this is just a political blip and not a major new obstacle to stability.” While the inspections have stopped, Russian nuclear forces have maintained another key part of the New Start agreement, notifications to the US of any moves or changes in the status of their nuclear arsenal. “They have stepped up alerts. It’s remarkable,” said Rose Gottemoeller, former deputy secretary general of NATO and undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. “Notifications come to something called the National and Nuclear Threat Reduction Center, which is a center based in the State Department. They told me one day in May that they got 18 notices. They’ve never seen this number of alerts before,” added Gottemoeller, now a lecturer at Stanford University. “So it appears that the Russians, at least the Russian nuclear forces, intended to try to continue implementing for mutual predictability and trust.” Inspections are an important way to check whether a country’s notifications about its nuclear weapons are accurate, but Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based independent analyst of Russian nuclear forces, said they are not the only ones. “First, the volume of notifications is large enough that you can detect serious discrepancies,” said Podvig, who is also a senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. “Then there are always national technical means – they can’t see everything, of course, but serious discrepancies will be identified… So I wouldn’t say all is lost for arms control, although of course it’s a rather unfortunate decision on the part of of Russia”.
