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Back in December, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said work on an agreement to replace the expired at the same time the old treaty on strategic offensive arms, in fact, reached the final stage finish line. "

January 24, President Dmitry Medvedev said that "everything is normal in the negotiations, 95 percent of issues in the new treaty agreed upon."

Before Click the ninth round, held from 1 to 27 February, Russia's experts said that it could be the last, and named the date for signing a new contract beginning in the extreme case, the end of March.

In the meantime, the eve of the opening of the tenth round of Russia's senior military expressed doubts about the prospects for agreement.

Former chief of staff, now Deputy Security Council Secretary Yuri Baluyevsky said Monday that "today the process of negotiations towards a treaty on strategic offensive arms is not very easy. There are a number of problems."

"I am convinced that the START Treaty will be signed, but to its ratification. And this issue is not so simple in the United States, and I would say in Russia", - he added.

New argument

Subject of possible difficulties with the ratification of the treaty by the State Duma first arose less than two weeks ago during a visit to Washington, head of the International Committee of the lower chamber Konstantin Kosachev.

Moreover, if the February 24 Kosachev said that "in this agreement as we would not want this issue [missile defense] clearly spelled out will not happen, then the next day, he said that without reference to the ABM treaty Duma ratify.

If the Duma refused to approve the treaty, signed by the President, it would be the first for ten years, the case when Russia's parliament would be sold in opinion with the Kremlin.

According to available data, the main stumbling block in negotiations was the issue of American plans for missile defense.

If Washington believes that the problems of START and ABM should be considered separately, then Moscow would like to prescribe such obligations in the agreement that actually would defeat the possibility of U.S. unilateral action in this area.

The experts expressed different views regarding the one who needed more than agreement on strategic offensive arms.

Official optimism

However, at the official level, Moscow continues to say that the talks are moving well.

"In a relatively short period of time through intense negotiations with the United States we have managed to come close to making a new treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, providing a further reduction of the arms," - said Dmitry Medvedev on March 5 board meeting of the Ministry of Defense.

"As a result of intensive work by significant progress in the harmonization of the remaining issues," - said in a statement the Foreign Ministry on March 1.

Presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters that the Kremlin considers the actual signing of the document in March and April.

START-1 Treaty was signed on July 31, 1991 in Moscow and came into force on 5 December 1994. December 6, 2001 the United States and Russia announced the implementation of the obligations contained therein.

According to the data, which resulted in last August in an interview with the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda Rossiyskogo first deputy chief of the National Center for reducing nuclear danger, Colonel Sergei Ryzhkov, at the time of signing the agreement the U.S. had 2,246 vehicles and 10,563 warheads, the Soviet Union - 2288 vehicles and 8757 warheads.

By 2009, according to Ryzhkov, the U.S. has reduced its strategic nuclear arsenal to 1,195 vehicles and 5,573 warheads, and Russia - to 811 vehicles and 3,906 warheads.

The new treaty is to reduce the number of carriers to 500-1100 units, and warheads - up to 1500-1675 units.