According to the Kremlin, Russian and US negotiators have discussed the New START expiry and agreed on the need to quickly launch new arms control talks.
The New START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms pact between the two countries, expired yesterday, Thursday, February 5, 2026, leaving no caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century and fueling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.
Speaking to reporters, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian and US negotiators discussed the issue in the United Arab Emirates, where Russian, Ukrainian and US delegations held two days of talks on a peace settlement in Ukraine.
“There is an understanding, and they talked about it in Abu Dhabi, that both parties will take responsible positions and both parties realize the need to start talks on the issue as soon as possible.”
Dmitry Peskov
Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit.
However, US President Donald Trump has ignored the offer and argued he wants China to be a part of a new pact, which Beijing has rebuffed.
Trump posted on his Truth Social network, “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.”
Asked to comment on a report claiming Russian and U.S. negotiators discussed a possible informal deal to observe the pact’s limits for at least six months, Peskov responded that any such extension could only be formal.
“Obviously its provisions can only be extended in a formal way. It’s hard to imagine any informal extension in this sphere.”
Dmitry Peskov
New START, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, was the last remaining pact in a long series of agreements between Moscow and Washington to limit their nuclear arsenals, starting with SALT I in 1972.
New START 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 set to expire in 2021 but was extended for five 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, President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia couldn’t allow US inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies openly declared a goal of Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine.
At the same time, the Kremlin emphasized that it wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.
By offering in September to abide by New START’s limits for a year, which would buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement, Putin said that the treaty’s expiration would be destabilizing and could fuel nuclear proliferation.
US And Russia Agree To Reestablish Military Dialogue
Even as New START expired, the US. and Russia agreed to reestablish high-level, military-to-military dialogue for the first time in more than four years in another sign of warming relations between the two countries since President Donald Trump returned to office and sought to end the war in Ukraine.
The agreement emerged from a meeting between senior Russian and American military officials in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
High-level military communication was suspended in late 2021, as tension between Moscow and Washington rose ahead of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The US European Command said in a statement that the restored communication channel “will provide a consistent military-to-military contact as the parties continue to work towards a lasting peace.”
The resumption of the military hotline marks an effort to ease tensions that soared after the start of the war and to avoid collisions between Russian and US forces.
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