U.S. President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the United States would continue to work with Russia to reduce the two countries' nuclear arsenals.
"We will engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals and continue leading the global effort to secure nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands," he said during his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday, Interfax reported.
The U.S. president's comments come a day after a top U.S. arms control official arrived in Moscow to persuade the Kremlin to continue its decommissioning of deployed nuclear weapons, saying such a move would save the two countries $8 billion a year.
U.S. officials say the limit of 1,550 strategic deployed nuclear weapons set in the 2010 New START treaty could actually be reduced to 1,000.
Russia joined the U.S. in condemning the latest nuclear test by North Korea on Tuesday after the country announced that it conducted one of the biggest yet underground nuclear tests in the northeast of the country.
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