U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (Jan. 26) for the first Time since taking office, the White House said. The two heads of state reached a consensus on extending the expiring arms control treaty “New START. The Kremlin announced the same day that the two countries had reached the agreement.
According to a statement released by the White House, Biden and Putin talked about the extension of the arms control treaty during the phone call.
The White House said the two leaders agreed to have their teams work intensively to complete the extension of the “New START” arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia by Feb. 5, which expires Feb. 5.
“New START” refers to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The treaty limits the number of nuclear warheads that the U.S. and Russia can deploy to no more than 1,550. It also limits the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers with nuclear warheads. In addition, the number of launchers used to launch nuclear warheads is also limited.
White House spokesman Jen Psaki announced the phone conversation between the two leaders at a daily briefing Tuesday.
During the call with Putin, Biden proposed a five-year extension of U.S.-Russian New START, Psaki said, while also touching on other issues, including the United States’ strong support for Ukrainian sovereignty; the detention of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny; Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. election; and the U.S. military’s role in the U.S. elections. Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. election, the SolarWinds cyberattack and reports that the Russians have offered a bounty to Taliban insurgents to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Russian state media RT TV reported that Putin and Biden discussed extending “New START,” cooperation in the fight against COVID-19, a pneumonia disease caused by a Chinese Communist virus, and normalizing bilateral relations.
The Kremlin said Tuesday that Russia and the United States have reached an agreement to extend the New START nuclear arms control treaty, a move that upholds an important pact between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
The Kremlin said both Putin and Biden “expressed satisfaction” with the extension of the treaty.
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