Russia ready to drop START nuclear arms treaty: Putin
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said Russia was prepared to drop a nuclear weapons treaty with the US and warned of “global catastrophe” if Washington keeps dismantling an international arms control regime. Speaking to heads of international news agencies at an economic forum in the city of Saint Petersburg, Putin said Washington showed no genuine interest in conducting talks on extending the New START treaty which caps the number of nuclear warheads well below Cold War limits. “If no-one feels like extending the agreement -- New START -- well, we won’t do it then,” Putin said. “We have said a hundred times that we are ready (to extend it),” Putin said. The treaty was signed by US President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Prague in 2010. It expires in 2021.
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