Trump reacts to Putin's proposal on nuclear arsenal control

"Sounds like a good idea to me," US President Donald Trump told reporters as he was leaving the White House.

New START Treaty

The Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, also known as New START, is an agreement between Russia and the United States on mutual reductions of deployed nuclear arsenals.

The two countries signed the treaty in 2010. It was set for ten years, with an option to extend for five more by mutual consent. The treaty replaced earlier agreements, START II (which expired in 2009) and START I (which ended in 2002).

Under its provisions, within seven years of entry into force and thereafter, each party was required to limit its deployed strategic systems to:

• 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and heavy bombers (HBs);

• 1,550 warheads mounted on those delivery systems;

• 800 deployed and non-deployed launchers for ICBMs, SLBMs, and HBs.

The New START treaty is due to expire in February 2026, and neither the United States nor Russia has yet taken steps to replace it with a new agreement.

In July, Trump announced plans to begin preparing a new arms reduction treaty. The US president has repeatedly said that China should also join any future deal, but Beijing has rejected the idea.

On February 21, 2023, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the treaty.

Any new arrangement to limit nuclear arsenals would sharply contrast with the growing tension between Washington and Moscow following the Trump–Putin meeting in Alaska in mid-August, which came amid reports of russian drones violating NATO airspace.

In September, Putin proposed that both sides voluntarily continue to observe the limits on the size of their strategic nuclear arsenals if the United States did the same.

Last week, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, said Moscow was still waiting for a response from Trump to Putin’s proposal to voluntarily maintain restrictions on deployed strategic nuclear weapons after the expiration of the current treaty.

On Sunday, Putin warned that the US decision to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia would "destroy Moscow’s relations with Washington."