Russia has suspended an arrangement that allowed US and Russian inspectors to visit each other's nuclear weapons sites under the 2010 New Start treaty.

The Russian foreign ministry in a statement said facilities that are subject to inspections under the New START treaty will be temporarily exempt from such inspections.

He said Russia is now forced to resort to this measure as a result of Washington's persistent desire to implicitly achieve a restart of inspections on conditions that do not take into account existing realities.