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US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is to lead a high-level American delegation to hold strategic and arms control talks with Russian counterparts in Geneva, the State Department says.
“This meeting follows up on a commitment made between President [Joe] Biden and Russian President [Vladimir] Putin to have a deliberate and robust dialogue between our two nations that will seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures,” said the State Department in a statement quoted in an AP report on Saturday.
According to the report, Sherman — currently on an official Asia tour and due to meet with the Chinese foreign minister on Sunday — will be accompanied by the newly confirmed top US arms control diplomat, Bonnie Jenkins and will begin discussions on Wednesday amid rising hostilities between Washington and Moscow, ranging from weapons systems to cyberattacks, Ukraine and even old allegations of Russian meddling in US elections.
Russia’s negotiating team in the first round of the talks will be headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared on Friday.
The main focus of the talks, however, is expected to cover “strategic stability issues” as agreed by Biden and his Russian counterpart during their meeting in the same Swiss city last month, the report added.
The Biden administration seeks to include in the arms negotiations Russia’s numerically superior arsenal of non-strategic nuclear missiles, which are not covered by New START treaty but are of specific concern to European allies and members nations of the US-led NATO military alliance.
The Russians, on the other hand, have declared that they will insist that any new agreement would include negotiated limits on US missile defense systems, which they regard as a longer-term threat to the viability of their strategic arsenal.
The two sides are further expected to explore ways to move beyond the New START agreement extended earlier this year by Biden and Putin until 2026. The treaty was due to expire last February and former President Donald Trump’s administration had refused to extend it.
