Kremlin says Russia is ready to work with US to save nuclear arms treaty

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday said the Kremlin is willing to work to salvage the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a nuclear deal signed between Washington and Moscow during the Cold War.

Lavrov said that, during talks in Geneva earlier this week, he offered to allow U.S. experts to inspect a missile that the White House says violates the deal, but that the offer was declined, according to The Associated Press.

The U.S. negotiators instead insisted that the missile be destroyed. 

{mosads}President Trump said in October that the U.S. would withdraw from the landmark pact after his administration accused Russia of violating the deal. 

Russia’s “decision to violate the INF Treaty and other commitments all clearly indicate that Russia has rebuffed repeated U.S. efforts to reduce the salience, role, and number of nuclear weapons,” the administration wrote in a nuclear strategy document last year.

The pact bans all land-based missiles with ranges of 310 to 3,420 miles and includes missiles carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads. The original ban between Moscow and Washington resulted in 2,692 missiles being destroyed.

Russia claims the missile’s range and dimensions put the missile outside the scope of the INF, but U.S. Undersecretary of State Andrea Thompson maintained in a statement Tuesday that “Russia continues to be in material breach of the treaty.”