Trump denounced nuclear arms treaty in phone call with Putin – sources

Donald Trump has told Vladimir Putin he does not want to renew a 2010 arms control treaty that limits the number of strategic nuclear weapons the US and Russia can deploy.

Trump angrily denounced the New Start treaty in a 28 January phone call to the Russian leader, according to sources briefed on the call. Reuters, which first reported Trump’s remarks, said the new US president also had to pause the hour-long call to ask what the New Start treaty was.

The White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, confirmed that the call was paused but said it was because the president wanted to solicit the views of his aides.

“It wasn’t like he didn’t know what was being said,” Spicer said. “He wanted an opinion on something.”

He did not give any further details, describing the hour-long conversation as a “private call”. The Kremlin had previously characterised it as a friendly discussion in which “both sides demonstrated a mood for active, joint work on stabilizing and developing Russian-American cooperation”.

 

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