The US has determined Russia is not complying with its obligations under the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the powers, officials said on Tuesday.

In a report sent to Congress, the US state department said Russia violated the New Start treaty by failing to allow required inspections and refusing to participate in compliance meetings.“Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the US from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of US-Russian nuclear arms control,” a US state department official said.

Last week top Republicans wrote to Biden administration officials urging them to make a determination about Russia’s compliance, citing concerns about Moscow’s decision last year to suspend inspections and cancel participation in consultations required by the treaty.Though the treaty is not directly linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow’s hostility to the west over sanctions and supplies of high-tech weaponry to Kyiv has aggravated tensions over it.

Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and a key negotiator on the treaty, said in an interview with the newspaper Kommersant last Thursday that Russia was unlikely to resume talks as long as the US continued to support Ukraine.
Ryabkov said Russia had told the US that “as long as the US doesn’t reconsider its extremely hostile line against our country and abandon its policy of cultivating threats to Russia’s national security”, any “positive signals” about New Start compliance would be “unjustified, poorly timed, and inappropriate”.
On Tuesday, Ryabkov met Lynne Tracy, the new US ambassador to Moscow, and discussed “some current issues of arms control”, the foreign ministry said.

But when Tracy arrived to present her credentials a day earlier, she was greeted by a crowd of sign-waving hecklers who chanted: “America is a terrorist state!”Police did not disperse the gathering — itself a sign that it had probably been officially sanctioned, as even pro-regime public protests are tightly controlled by the security services.

US officials said on Tuesday they remained committed to the agreement and urged Russia to return to compliance by allowing inspections to resume and convening talks. Russian inspectors faced no obstacles in travelling to the US, they added.Washington’s assessment comes as western officials are concerned that Russia may use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine as the Kremlin’s forces face further setbacks on the battlefield.