New Delhi: US President Donald Trump has declined a proposal from Russian President Vladimir Putin to voluntarily extend restrictions on the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons, signalling instead his preference for negotiating a new and broader arms control agreement.
Trump said the recently expired New START treaty was poorly negotiated and no longer suitable for current geopolitical realities. He called for fresh talks between nuclear experts from both countries to frame what he described as a modern and improved agreement that could remain in force for decades.
“Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ [A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated], we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network.
He reiterated that any future agreement should ideally include other major nuclear powers, including China, though Beijing has previously shown little interest in joining such negotiations.
The New START treaty, which expired earlier this year, had capped the number of deployed nuclear warheads and delivery systems held by the United States and Russia. Its lapse has raised concerns among arms control experts about the risk of a renewed nuclear arms race at a time of heightened global tensions.
Putin had earlier indicated that Russia was willing to continue observing the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington agreed to do the same. However, the United States did not formally respond to the offer, and Moscow has since expressed regret over the treaty’s expiration.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia would continue to approach nuclear stability responsibly, but stressed that future decisions would be guided by national interests. 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,” Peskov was quoted as saying by Los Angeles Times.
According to Al Jazeera, US and Russian delegations meeting in Abu Dhabi for discussions related to the Ukraine conflict had also held talks on the possibility of a short-term extension of the New START framework, though no agreement emerged from those discussions.
The original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed in 1991 by the United States and the former Soviet Union. The New START agreement, signed in 2010 by then-US President Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, limited each side to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and was last extended in 2021 before expiring this year.
The pact envisioned on-site inspections to verify compliance which were stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed. In February 2023, Putin suspended Russia’s participation preventing U.S. inspections of its nuclear sites as NATO, including the US, took side with Ukraine.
The collapse of the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow comes amid renewed global anxiety over nuclear risks. Analysts have warned that the erosion of long-standing arms control mechanisms could lower barriers to escalation, particularly as nuclear-armed states face increasing geopolitical friction.
