Roving Periscope: Trump’s NO to Putin’s plea to extend n-arms cap deal
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: US President Donald Trump has rejected a call from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to extend cap on the two countries’ nuclear deployments, the media reported on Friday.
Trump shot down an offer from Putin proposing a voluntary extension of the recently-expired limits on the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons.
The US President said on Thursday that he wants negotiators from both countries to sit down and hammer out a new agreement, calling the old treaty, which expired on February 4, 2026, as “badly negotiated.”
The expired treaty, called the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), had replaced the pre-USSR nuclear treaties with the US.
The first START agreement was signed by the US and the former Soviet Union in 1991. Then, US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed the New START in 2010 which became effective in 2011.
That deal was extended for another five years in 2021, following an agreement between Putin and then US-President Joe Biden. It lapsed on February 4, 2026. Medvedev, now a key ally of President Vladimir Putin, is the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia since 2020.
New START capped their strategic nuclear arsenals and established an important on-site inspection and monitoring regime. It was the latest in a string of treaties that facilitated reductions in the global nuclear warhead stockpile from a high of 70,000 in the mid-1980s to roughly 12,000 today.
The US-Russia treaty set limits on strategic nuclear and capped the number of deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 on each side, with up to 700 deployed ground- or submarine-launched missiles and bomber planes, and 800 launchers. It also included a system of short-notice, and on-site inspections, enabling each side to satisfy itself that the other was complying.
But Trump thinks his Democrat adversary Barack Obama signed a “badly negotiated” deal.
“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,” the US President wrote on his private social media network, Truth Social.
Earlier, he even stated that he would like China also to be involved in the new treaty, but Beijing has shown little interest in doing so.
The expiration of the New START pact means fewer limits on the massive nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia, spurring concerns over a potential arms race at a time of resurgent anxiety over nuclear weapons.
In 2025, President Putin stated that he would abide by the treaty for another year if Washington would commit to doing the same.
The US, which has previously grumbled that the treaty limited its ability to deploy more missiles against Russia and China, has ignored the Russian offer.
Regretting the expiration, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia will continue with a “responsible, thorough approach to stability when it comes to nuclear weapons”, adding that “of course, it will be guided primarily by its national interests”.
According to some media reports, the US and Russian delegations, in Abu Dhabi to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine, reportedly also discussed extending the New START treaty for another six months to enable them to update the treaty.
Recent instances of fighting between nuclear-armed states, such as India and Pakistan, unnerved analysts who worry about the erosion of taboos and treaties meant to restrain the use of nuclear weapons in conflict.
During the ongoing war against Ukraine, Putin had also warned that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to Western efforts to support Ukraine, causing alarm among observers.
