Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Russia was awaiting the US’s response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to extend the New START treaty for one year.
The New START treaty limits the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems that the US and Russia can deploy and is set to expire in February 2026. New START is the last nuclear arms control treaty between the two powers, and there’s been no work on negotiating a replacement treaty.
In a statement on Monday, Putin offered to continue abiding by the limits for another year if the US reciprocates as a way to make room for diplomacy. Peskov said that participants in the Global Atomic Forum, an event held as part of Russia’s World Atomic Week in Moscow, were pleased with Putin’s offer to the US.
“Overall, everyone welcomes Russia’s approach and Putin’s initiative. So we’re waiting for the other side’s reaction,” Peskov said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
Arms control between the US and Russia has collapsed over the past few decades as the US has unilaterally withdrawn from several treaties, including the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US left in 2019.
Russia recently announced that it is no longer bound by a self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of INF missiles, as the US has developed and deployed a new missile system that would have been banned by the treaty.
