Kremlin warns of ‘extremely dangerous’ vacuum of nuclear arms control

Moscow and Washington urgently need to resume talks on a new framework for strategic stability, Dmitry Peskov has said

Russia and the US urgently need to resume dialogue on strategic stability and arms control, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The absence of a treaty-based framework in this areas is creating a very dangerous situation, he added.

The New START treaty, the last remaining bilateral agreement limiting US and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, expired in February without an extension or replacement. Signed in 2010 and extended in 2021, the treaty capped each side at 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 deployed delivery systems, while providing for transparency and on-site verification measures.

Following the treaty’s expiration, Russia suggested maintaining caps on warheads for another year if Washington reciprocated, but the initiative went unanswered, according to Moscow.

Russia is convinced that talks must resume urgently, Peskov told reporters on Tuesday. “This is an extremely important issue,” he said. “For the first time in a long while, the world has been left without this treaty-based legal framework.” He described the situation as “extremely dangerous.”

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Peskov urged an early start to negotiations, warning that they would inevitably be complex and lengthy.

President Donald Trump’s administration has long insisted that any future nuclear arms control agreement should include China as well. In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio maintained that Washington would be pressing for trilateral talks with Beijing and Moscow.

On Monday, Trump said he was open to discussing nuclear disarmament at a potential meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in China.

“We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization,” he told reporters. “If President Xi wants to have it, I’d have it. I’m sure we’d talk about other things like trade too.”

Peskov stressed that Moscow could not disregard the nuclear arsenals of European NATO members, particularly Britain and France, in future strategic stability talks with Washington.

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Earlier this year, President Emmanuel Macron announced a “forward deterrence” initiative that could see French nuclear weapons deployed to other European countries. In March, he said that France would no longer disclose the size of its arsenal, arguing that “to be free, we have to be feared.” He also outlined plans to increase its nuclear arsenal, which is currently just under 300 warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Moscow has warned that the strategy could backfire, saying it cannot “ignore an obvious buildup of the nuclear component of NATO’s joint potential.”

In August, NBC reported that the Pentagon was also working on a nuclear strategy that would give the US president a wider range of nuclear options in a potential conflict with Russia or China. The approach would reportedly pivot towards shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons instead of relying primarily on long-range strategic nuclear weapons.

Russia updated its nuclear doctrine in 2024, stating that aggression by a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear power would be treated as a joint attack and that nuclear weapons could be used if conventional aggression posed a critical threat to the sovereignty or territorial integrity of Russia or its ally Belarus. Moscow also repeatedly criticized the US nuclear weapons deployment to Europe as part of NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements.