By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW, Feb 2 (Reuters) – Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev has warned of the danger of letting the last U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaty expire this week without any understanding of what comes next, suggesting it would speed up the “Doomsday Clock”.
The New START treaty, which Medvedev signed in 2010 when he was Russia’s president, will expire on Thursday barring a last-minute understanding between Moscow and Washington.
U.S. President Donald Trump has indicated he will let the treaty expire without accepting an offer from Moscow to voluntarily extend its caps on deployments of strategic nuclear weapons – powerful arms with a long range and high yield.
“I don’t want to say that this (letting the treaty expire) immediately means a catastrophe and a nuclear war will begin, but it should still alarm everyone,” Medvedev told Reuters, TASS and Russian war blogger WarGonzo in an interview.
“The clocks are ticking and they obviously have to speed up,” he said, referring to the symbolic “Doomsday Clock” gauging the likelihood of a man-made catastrophe destroying the world.
The U.S. has suggested that China, the world’s third largest nuclear power by number of warheads, should join arms control talks. Beijing has indicated no willingness to join.
In an interview with the New York Times last month, Trump said on the New START treaty: “If it expires, it expires…We’ll just do a better agreement.”
CLOSE ALLY OF PUTIN
Medvedev, 60, is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin and served as president and prime minister before becoming deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council in 2020. His comments often give a sense of hardliners’ thinking in Russia’s elite, foreign diplomats say.
Relations with the U.S. were severely strained by the start of the conflict in Ukraine but have improved since Trump’s return to the White House last year and U.S. envoys are now trying to broker an end to the fighting.
Asked whether Trump was positive or negative for Russia, Medvedev said Moscow respected the fact that the American people had chosen him as president.
He said it was encouraging that contacts had picked up with Washington but cautioned that the world had recently become a dangerous place, adding: “We are not interested in a global conflict. We’re not crazy.”
Russia has been fiercely critical of European leaders, who have loudly criticised Moscow over Ukraine. Medvedev said Europe was run by a “gang of dimwits” who had undermined their own economy in a failed bid to defeat Russia.
Asked about Russia’s artillery and drone production, he said such figures were classified but that production had soared many times since the war in Ukraine began and that Russia had adapted well to the demands of drone warfare.
“We have increased production volumes very quickly. I believe that our defence industry is working like clockwork today,” he said.
Medvedev, who portrayed himself as a moderniser when president from 2008 to 2012, said Russia should not fall behind in leading technologies including generative Artificial Intelligence, synthetic biology and quantum computing.
“We are in this race with the others,” he said. “The main thing here is not to fall far behind. There was a period in our country when, due to the collapse of the (Soviet) Union, we didn’t do much research – we just tried to survive.”
(Editing by Tom Hogue, Michael Perry and Timothy Heritage)
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