US silence on N-treaty may be ‘fatal’: Russia

Bloomberg

Calls on Donald Trump to start talks about the last remaining nuclear weapons agreement between Russia and the US remain unanswered, 18 months before it expires, increasing the risk of an unhindered arms race, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman.
The consequences will be “quite fatal” if Russia and the US let lapse the 2010 New START treaty limiting both nuclear powers’ strategic arsenals, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on a call with reporters on Monday. “Undoubtedly, strategic stability on the overall global level will be affected, because we all — I mean humanity — we will be left without a single document that would regulate this area.”
The New START treaty is due to expire in February 2021. The US conducted a flight test of a new intermediate-range cruise missile on August 18 after earlier in the month pulling out of the INF treaty with Russia that barred such tests or deployment of the technology.
The collapse of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces accord “inevitably” undermines the New START treaty as well as the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Putin said.