Russia welcomes U.S. proposal to expand nuclear treaty

---

The Russia on Friday welcomed US President Joe Biden's proposal to extend the last nuclear arms control treaty between the two nations by five years which is set to expire in less than two weeks. Russia is in favor of extending the agreement and is waiting to see the details of the US proposal, said Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin .

The White House announced Thursday that Biden had proposed to Moscow to extend the New START treaty by five years.

Peskov said in a conference call with reporters, we can only celebrate the political will to extend the document. But everything will depend on the details of the proposal.

The pact, signed in 2010 by then Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, as well as 700 missiles and bombers, and includes extensive on-the-spot inspections to verify compliance. Expires February 5.

Russia had long been proposing to extend the treaty without conditions or changes, but the government of former President Donald Trump waited until last year to start talks and made the extension conditional on a series of demands. The dialogue stalled and months of negotiations failed to reduce the differences.

Peskov said, certain conditions had been proposed for enlargement, and some of them were totally unacceptable to us, so let's first see what the United States offers.

Mikhail Ulyanov, Russian ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, also praised Biden's proposal, calling it an encouraging step.

He tweeted, the expansion will give the two parties more time to consider possible additional measures aimed at strengthening strategic stability and global security.