A successor to a key 1991 arms control agreement with the United States should contain a ban on deploying offensive weapons in outer space, the head of Russian strategic missile forces said yesterday (see GSN, June 10).
(Jun. 11) -
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, shown last week, yesterday said his country was willing to eliminate its entire nuclear arsenal if other nuclear-armed states did the same (Alexey Druzhinin/Getty Images).
Russia has joined China in pressing the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament to seek a prohibition of space weapons (see GSN, May 29), but Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov said the matter should also be addressed in talks aimed at replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is set to expire on Dec. 5 (see GSN, June 4).
"Our country is interested in including limitations not only on the number of nuclear warheads, but also on the number of their delivery vehicles in the new arms reduction treaty. We also stand for maintaining the ban on the deployment of strategic weapons, offensive and defensive, outside national borders, the prohibition of any kinds of offensive weapons in space, and a more efficient use of inspection and data exchange mechanisms established in line with the START 1 treaty," he said (RIA Novosti, June 10).
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are expected to discuss progress in the arms control talks at a summit in Moscow next month.
The new document could mandate additional reductions to the two nations' nuclear arsenals, which are now limited to between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed warheads. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday said his country was willing to eliminate its entire arsenal if other nuclear-armed states did the same, Agence France-Presse reported.
"What do we need nuclear arms for?" Putin said. "Was it us that invented and ever used it?" he said, referring to the U.S. development and use of the first atomic weapons during World War II.
"If those who made the atomic bomb and used it are ready to abandon it, along with -- I hope -- other nuclear powers that officially or unofficially possess it, we will of course welcome and facilitate this process in every possible way," Putin said (Agence France-Presse/Spacewar.com, June 10).
A bilateral agreement on reducing nonstrategic nuclear weapons is unlikely in the near future, although either Moscow or Washington could potentially decide to roll back its tactical nuclear arsenal independently, retired Russian Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin told Interfax yesterday. Dvorkin was addressing a call by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to include tactical weapons in the START talks.
"The Russian leadership said long ago that it was willing to start consultations on restricting and reducing tactical nuclear weapons after U.S. tactical nuclear weapons [are] removed from Europe. This is one of the preconditions," Dvorkin said (see GSN, Jan. 9).
Negotiating tactical nuclear weapon reductions would be complicated by the weapons' delivery systems, which can carry conventional weapons as well as nuclear armaments, Dvorkin noted. That is rarely the case for the vehicles used to deliver strategic nuclear weapons, he said.
[Strategic nuclear weapons] have quite limited deployment sites. [Tactical nuclear weapons] are not tied to any particular deployment sites, and it is virtually impossible to control them," he said (Interfax I, June 10).
Solovstov yesterday said that Russia could extend the life of its RS-20 ICBM up to three decades, Interfax reported.
"This is a unique missile," he said of the weapon, designated in the West as the SS-18 Satan. "We plan to extend their service lives to 25 or maybe even to 30 years."
Russia at the end of 2007 was maintaining 75 of the missiles, which are each capable of carrying 10 nuclear warheads, according to Interfax (Interfax II, June 10).