Before considering returning to its final nuclear agreement with the United States, Russia said on Wednesday it would need to see a shift in NATO’s position and a desire for talks.

When President Vladimir Putin claimed on Tuesday that the West was attempting to hand Russia a “strategic defeat” in Ukraine, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament swiftly moved to suspend Moscow’s participation in the New START deal.

The 2010 deal caps each nation’s nuclear weapons at 1,550. However, security specialists fear its failure may spark a new arms race at a difficult time when Putin increasingly frames his year-old Ukrainian war as a confrontation with the West.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said:

“West position will determine everything… If we’re heard, things will change.”

“We will, of course, be closely monitoring the ongoing activities of the United States and its allies, especially with a view to taking additional countermeasures, if required,” deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov was cited as saying by the Interfax news agency.

“You cannot believe everything that emerges in the media, especially if the source is CNN,” Ryabkov reportedly said in response to a CNN claim that Russia had attempted to test its multi-nuclear Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile earlier this week.

The suspended pact allows each party to inspect the other’s locations (but inspections had been paused since 2020 due to COVID-19 and the Ukrainian war) and requires thorough reporting on deployments.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the Russian decision “very sad and reckless” on Tuesday. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg asked Putin to rethink.

Russia stated it would stick to the warhead limit but was ready to change its mind.

Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin accused the U.S. of the breakdown before the State Duma vote.

“By neglecting to comply with its commitments and rejecting our country’s ideas on global security concerns, the United States damaged the architecture of international stability,” Volodin said.

Russia is now asking that British and French nuclear weapons targeted against Russia be included in the arms control framework, which analysts believe is a non-starter for Washington after more than 50 years of bilateral nuclear treaties.

“We will undoubtedly pay special attention to what line and what actions London and Paris are taking,” Ryabkov told TASS.

He claimed Moscow and Washington had no direct nuclear discussion, and it was unclear if it would restart.