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Speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, the official said the US steps to stop sharing with Russia some of the information required under the New Start treaty were reversible, Reuters reports, and that the United States was looking to draw Moscow back into arms control talks, an unlikely prospect given Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and US arms supplies to Kyiv.
US to stop sharing some New Start data with Russia
The United States said it will stop providing Russia some notifications required under the New Start arms control treaty from Thursday, Reuters reports, including updates on its missile and launcher locations, to retaliate for Moscow’s “ongoing violations” of the accord.
In a fact sheet on its website, the State Department said it would also stop giving Russia telemetry information – remotely gathered data about a missile’s flight – on launches of US intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not formally withdrawn from the treaty, which limits deployed strategic nuclear arsenals. On 21 February, he said Russia would suspend participation, imperilling the last pillar of US-Russian arms control.
Signed in 2010 and due to expire in 2026, the New Start treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the countries can deploy. Under its terms, Moscow and Washington may deploy no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and 700 land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.
“Beginning June 1, 2023, the United States is withholding from Russia notifications required under the treaty, including updates on the status or location of treaty-accountable items such as missiles and launchers,” the State Department factsheet said. It said Russia stopped providing these in late February.
A Biden administration official said the United States “will continue to adhere to the (treaty’s) central limits … and expect that Russia will continue to do so as well.”
US debt ceiling deal won’t limit Ukraine spending, says Chuck Schumer
Joan E Greve
The Senate narrowly passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling on Thursday night, sending the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk and averting a federal default that could have wreaked havoc on the US economy and global markets.
As some of their colleagues lamented the state of America’s debt, defence hawks in the Senate Republican conference warned that the legislation does not sufficiently fund the Pentagon, leaving the US military vulnerable in the face of foreign threats.
Schumer and McConnell attempted to allay those concerns by entering a statement into the record reaffirming that America stands ready to “respond to ongoing and growing national security threats”.
“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries,” the joint statement read. “The Senate is not about to ignore our national needs, nor abandon our friends and allies who face urgent threats from America’s most dangerous adversaries.”
Kyiv shoots down more than 30 missiles and drones in early morning strikes
Ukrainian authorities on Friday lifted air raid alerts across most of the nation, and officials in the capital Kyiv said defences appeared to have shot down more than 30 missiles and drones fired by Russia.
Moscow has launched around 20 separate missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities since the start of May.
Kyiv military authorities, writing on Telegram, said Russia had launched drones and cruise missiles at the same time.
“According to preliminary information, more than 30 air targets of various types were detected and destroyed in the airspace over and around Kyiv by air defence forces,” they said in a statement.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, who earlier reported two separate waves of attacks, wrote on Telegram that there had been no calls for rescue services.
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Ukraine regularly says its defences knock down the majority of Russia’s missiles and drones.
Opening Summary
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Helen Sullivan bringing you the latest. Russia has again launched overnight strikes on Kyiv, a day after three people, including a nine-year-old-child were killed in Moscow’s attacks on the city.
Ukrainian authorities on Friday lifted air raid alerts across most of the nation, and officials in the capital Kyiv said defences appeared to have shot down more than 30 missiles and drones fired by Russia.
And a US debt ceiling bill that the Senate passed on Thursday does not prevent Congress from pursuing more aid to Ukraine or for future national emergencies, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer said.
Moscow has launched around 20 separate missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities since the start of May.
Three people including a child were killed and at least 11 people were injured in an early morning missile attack on Kyiv that hit apartment buildings, two schools and a children’s clinic, according to city authorities. The attack, on International Children’s Day, reportedly involved 10 Iskander short-range missiles, and there was only a few minutes’ warning before they hit. Nearly 500 children have been killed in military attacks in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. A nine-year-old girl and her mother who were killed were reportedly locked out of an air raid shelter.
At least nine civilians were injured in shelling in Belgorod, the region’s governor said, with hundreds of children, women and elderly evacuated. Unverified video showed a fire at a large building in Shebekino. Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said Ukraine’s armed forces had repeatedly shelled Shebekino with Soviet-designed Grad 122mm rockets. Russian anti-Putin partisans said they were responsible for the raid on Shebekino, the second partisan attack inside Russia in less than two weeks.
Ukraine has imposed sanctions on Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB intelligence officer whose son Evgeny sits in the House of Lords, in connection with Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The national security and defence council in Kyiv imposed sanctions on Lebedev Sr last October. The decision – first reported by Tortoise media – emerged on Thursday and follows a decree signed by president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelenskiy said on Thursday he had received a strong show of support from allies attending a European summit in Moldova on the question of supplying fighter jets to Kyiv to help repel Russian forces. He did not give details.
Starlink, the satellite communications service started by Elon Musk, has a Department of Defence contract to buy satellite services for Ukraine, the Pentagon has said.
The Agence France-Presse news agency held a memorial ceremony at its Paris headquarters for the journalist Arman Soldin, who was killed last month in Ukraine. AFP’s global news director, Phil Chetwynd, confirmed journalists would be gradually returning to frontline reporting in Ukraine next week.
Russian access to Faroe Islands’ north Atlantic ports will be restricted exclusively to fishing, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Faroese government is trying to reduce Russian activities at its ports due to the risk of espionage and after criticism over the renewal of the bilateral fisheries accord at the end of November.
Ukraine’s ministry of renovation and infrastructure said on Thursday the UN-brokered Black Sea grain export deal had been halted again because Russia had blocked registration of ships to all Ukrainian ports. A UN spokesperson said Russia had informed officials overseeing the initiative that Moscow would limit registrations to the port of Pivdennyi, in Ukraine’s Odesa province, until all parties agree to unblock the transit of Russian ammonia.
Taiwan has donated more than £4m to Lithuanian-led reconstructions projects in Ukraine, a Lithuanian government investment agency said on Wednesday. The funds will go towards rebuilding a school in Borodianka and a nursery in Irpin, the Central Project Management Agency said.
Zelenskiy said Kyiv wanted to receive a “clear” decision on its future in the Nato military alliance when the bloc’s leaders meet for a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, next month.
Nato foreign ministers are meeting in Oslo, where the French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, said the alliance needed to think about what kind of security guarantees it could give Ukraine, and Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said the time had come for Nato members to find a concrete answer to the question of how Ukraine could become a member.
Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billström, also in Oslo, said the time had come for Turkey and Hungary to ratify his nation’s Nato membership application. “We have fulfilled all our commitments,” Billström said. The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said he would soon travel to Turkey to discuss Sweden’s Nato membership.
