Russia sees bleak prospects for expiring nuclear arms pact given 'ruined' ties with US

By Mark Trevelyan

(Reuters) -Russia sees little chance of saving its last nuclear accord with the United States, due to expire in eight months, given the "ruined" state of relations with Washington, its top arms control official said in an interview published on Friday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also told TASS news agency that President Donald Trump's proposed Golden Dome missile defence project was a "deeply destabilising" factor creating formidable new obstacles to arms control.

His comments were among Moscow's bleakest yet about the prospects for the New START agreement, the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the two countries, which caps the number of strategic warheads that each side can deploy.

President Vladimir Putin in 2023 suspended Russian participation in New START, blaming U.S. support for Ukraine, although he said that Russia would remain within the treaty's limits on warheads, missiles and heavy bomber planes.

But if the treaty is not extended or replaced after it expires on February 5 next year, security experts fear it could fuel a new arms race at a time of acute international tension over the conflict in Ukraine, which both Putin and Trump have said could lead to World War Three.

The Federation of American Scientists, an authoritative source on arms control, says that if Russia decided to abandon the treaty limits, it could theoretically increase its deployed nuclear arsenal by up to 60% by uploading hundreds of additional warheads.

Ryabkov described Russia-U.S. ties as "simply in ruins".

"There are no grounds for a full-scale resumption of New START in the current circumstances. And given that the treaty ends its life cycle in about eight months, talking about the realism of such a scenario is increasingly losing its meaning," Ryabkov told TASS.

"Of course, deeply destabilising programmes like the Golden Dome - and the U.S. is implementing a number of them - create additional, hard-to-overcome obstacles to the constructive consideration of any potential initiatives in the field of nuclear missile arms control, when and if it comes to that."

Trump said last month he had selected a design for the $175-billion Golden Dome project, which aims to block threats from China and Russia by creating a network of satellites, perhaps numbering in the hundreds, to detect, track and potentially intercept incoming missiles.

Analysts say the initiative could sharply escalate the militarisation of space, prompting other countries to place similar systems there or to develop more advanced weapons to evade the missile shield.

Ryabkov's comments came in the same week that Ukraine stunned Moscow by launching drone strikes on air bases deep inside Russia that house the heavy bomber planes that form part of its nuclear deterrent.

Russia has said it will retaliate as and when its military sees fit.

(Reporting by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Gareth Jones)