He underlined that the work is underway.

"A large team of professionals has been sent from Russia to Europe in order to continue work on this agreement together with the American experts. The previous START is effective until December 5 this year. The negotiators have been given an overall objective to complete their work in time for this date. I think there is a fairly good chance, but both parties need to be wise and ready to listen to each other and understand certain circumstances in force today. There is no doubt this issue is of paramount importance, because the long-term goal is a nuclear-free peace," the President said.

"Yes, today it's a general objective which many think is something impossible to reach. And that a world free of nuclear weapons is an ideal world which must be on our agenda. Today we have nuclear powers which possess nuclear weapons on a so-called conventional basis. There are also de-facto members of the nuclear club who deny possessing nuclear weapons, while everyone knows they do. Growth of this club is against our deepest interests. As in this case the situation may grow uncontrollably. The non-proliferation objective is highly important, and while we work on non-proliferation, we should work on reduction at the same time: the reduction of strategic arms, both carriers and nuclear warheads. Today, we all have the chance to push this process forward, and that's what we will do, and that's what I'm urging our American partners to do too," said Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev.