MOSCOW: The Kremlin said Thursday it regretted the expiration of the last remaining nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States that left no caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century.
Arms control experts say the termination of the New START Treaty could set the stage for an unconstrained nuclear arms race.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last year declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit, but U.S. President Donald Trump has been noncommittal about extending it. He has indicated that he wants China to be a part of a new pact—something Beijing has refused.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that “Trump has made clear” in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it’s impossible to do something that doesn’t include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile.
Putin discussed the pact’s expiration with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday, noting the U.S. failure to respond to his proposal to extend its limits and saying that Russia “will act in a balanced and responsible manner based on thorough analysis of the security situation,” Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow views the treaty’s expiration Thursday “negatively” and regrets it. He said Russia will maintain its “responsible, thorough approach to stability when it comes to nuclear weapons,” adding that “of course, it will be guided primarily by its national interests.”
With the end of the treaty, Moscow “remains ready to take decisive military-technical measures to counter potential additional threats to the national security,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
“At the same time, our country remains open to seeking political-diplomatic ways to overcome the crisis, stabilize the strategic situation on the basis of equal and mutually beneficial dialogue solutions, if the appropriate conditions for such cooperation are shaped,” it said in a statement issued late Wednesday.
New START, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers—deployed and ready for use. It was originally supposed to expire in 2021 but was extended for five more years.
The pact envisioned sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance, although they stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed in February 2023. Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia couldn’t allow U.S. inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies have openly declared Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine as their goal. At the same time, the Kremlin emphasized it wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons. In offering in September to abide by New START’s limits for a year to buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement, Putin said the treaty’s expiration would be destabilizing and could fuel nuclear proliferation.