Chief envoy: Russia to keep nuclear treaty limits if US does

Russia earlier vowed to act ‘responsibly’ should its last nuclear treaty with the United States expire on February 5. Above, a Topol-M ICBM drives across Red Square in a Victory Day Parade in Moscow on May 9, 2008. (AFP)
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Updated 11 February 2026
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Chief envoy: Russia to keep nuclear treaty limits if US does

MOSCOW: Russia will keep observing a moratorium on breaching the limits of the ‌New ‌START nuclear treaty ‌with ⁠the United States ⁠as long as Washington continues to do ⁠the same, ‌state news ‌agency TASS ‌quoted ‌Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on ‌Wednesday.
The treaty, which set ⁠caps on ⁠deployed missiles and warheads, expired on February 5.


US sympathies shift to Palestinians from Israelis for first time: Gallup poll

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US sympathies shift to Palestinians from Israelis for first time: Gallup poll

  • Poll: 41 percent of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36 percent sided with Israel
WASHINGTON: Americans for the first time sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis in their conflict, according to a Gallup poll released Friday, after the devastating Gaza war.
Views on the Middle East divide sharply along partisan lines, with the shift over the past year the result of more independents souring on Israel.
Overall, 41 percent of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36 percent sided with Israel, the poll said, with the rest undecided or saying they favored both or neither.
The gap is not statistically significant, but it marks the first time since Gallup asked the question more than two decades ago that Israel was not on top.
It also marks a sharp difference from just a year ago, when Israel led in sympathies 46 to 33 percent.
When asked about their sympathies, independents sided with the Palestinian people by 11 percentage points.
Members of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party continued to back Israel strongly, with 70 percent siding with Israel, although that figure has declined by 10 percentage points over the past decade.
Democrats’ views of Israel have grown increasingly negative since a decade ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly broke with then US president Barack Obama on his diplomacy with Iran.
Israel since then has moved sharply to the right. Some Democratic voters faulted former president Joe Biden for not doing more to rein in Israel in its devastating offensive in Gaza following the unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
In the latest poll, 65 percent of Democrats sympathized with the Palestinians and 17 percent with Israel.
Gallup surveyed 1,001 US adults by telephone from February 2 to 16.