The US president has said he discussed limits on nuclear arsenals with his Russian counterpart in Alaska
Washington wants a nuclear arms reduction deal with Russia and China, US President Donald Trump said on Monday, revealing that he talked denuclearization with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during their recent meeting in Alaska.
The US president made the remarks while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, claiming that Putin also showed interest in the matter during the summit.
“We would like to denuclearize. It’s too much power, and we talked about that also,” Trump stated.
“It was a very successful day for other things, because, you know, we’re also talking about missiles, nuclear, we’re talking about a lot of different things. We’re talking about limiting nuclear, we’ll get China into that. We have the most, Russia has the second most, and China has third. But China is way behind, but they’ll catch us in five years,” the US president stated.
It was not immediately clear what the US president’s assessment of the three nations’ nuclear arsenals was based upon. According to the latest figures by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia has some 2,591 warheads in storage and some 1,718 deployed, compared with 1,930 and 1,770 respectively in the US arsenal.
According to SIPRI’s estimates, Beijing has around 576 warheads, with only 24 deployed. The UK and France possess 120 and 280 deployed warheads, respectively.
The US president also said he had already spoken with Putin again following the Alaska summit, which was held on August 15.
“Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation. And then, unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kiev or someplace, and then I get very angry about it. I think we’re going to get the war done. It’s tough,” Trump said, admitting that he had thought the Ukraine conflict “would be the easiest” to settle.
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