MOSCOW. Dec 19 (Interfax) - Russia will meet its obligations on limiting strategic weapons under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) before the February 5, 2018 deadline, Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Foreign Ministry's Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, said on Tuesday.
"By February 5, 2018, we are supposed to meet the limits for warheads and delivery vehicles under the New START. The Russian Federation is strictly adhering to the Treaty and will meet its obligation on limiting the level of weapons. We can speak of this with all confidence," Ulyanov said in an interview with Interfax.
Asked whether the problem of the United States' non-nuclear strategic missiles and their capability of being rearmed with nuclear warheads obstructs the full implementation of the New START, Ulyanov replied, "As far as we know, the U.S. has not yet built non-nuclear strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles."
"In any case, the New START does not make a distinction between nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles, and all of them fall within the Treaty's scope as strategic offensive weapons. In addition, the New START directly envisions the possibility of remodeling heavy strategic bombers into non-nuclear ones, after which they are no longer counted," he said.
"The treaty does not deny" the parties the right to retain the capability to redeploy, Ulyanov said.
"For instance, the aggregate amount of strategic capabilities counted under the treaty envisions such a category as 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers and heavy bombers. As concerns warheads, they are not counted under the New START as long as they are not installed on deployed delivery vehicles," he said.
Russia and the U.S. signed the New START in Prague on April 8, 2010. It stipulates that the two countries have to reduce their numbers of nuclear warheads to 1,550 and of delivery vehicles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, i.e. intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers, to 700.