As of Wednesday, the United States has extended the treaty with Russia for five years to limit the number of nuclear weapons. Minister of Foreign Affairs Anthony Blinken has confirmed this.
The treaty would expire this month due to disputes between Donald Trump’s previous US administration and the Kremlin over compliance with the treaty.
At the end of January, Russia quickly agreed to grant the ‘Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty’ (START). It dates back to the 1980s when the Soviet Union still existed.
The agreement has been renewed or extended three times, but not always ratified by parliaments as planned. The last version is from 2010 and is due to expire on February 5th.
Like its predecessors, the new START treaty limits the number of strategic warheads, missiles and bombers that Russia and the United States are allowed to have. The two countries are known to account for about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.