Will Putin and Trump be able to renegotiate nuclear arsenal limits?

The Russian-American START Treaty expires in a year. What positions do Moscow and Washington currently hold on it and whether they will be able to agree on a new document in the area of ​​strategic stability within a year? RBK looked into it. A nuclear submarine armed with the corresponding ballistic missiles

The Russian-American Treaty on the Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms (START, START-3, New START) will cease to be in effect on February 5, 2026. There is no possibility of extension - it was concluded for ten years with a single extension by agreement of the parties for another five years.

Under the New START Treaty, signed by Russian and US Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama in Prague in 2010 (came into force in 2011), the two countries agreed to reduce their strategic offensive weapons as follows:

• deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) ​​and deployed heavy bombers - up to 700 units;
• warheads on deployed ICBMs and SLBMs, as well as nuclear warheads counted for deployed heavy bombers - up to 1,550 units;
• deployed and non-deployed launchers of ICBMs, SLBMs and heavy bombers - up to 800 units.

The treaty established a Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC) and a regime of mutual inspections of ICBM bases, submarines, and air bases. These inspections were suspended in 2020 due to covid and have not resumed.

What is the current situation with strategic stability?

By early 2025, when Donald Trump returned to the White House , the New START had been frozen for almost two years. Moscow announced the suspension of its participation in it in February 2023, emphasizing that the situation around the treaty was inextricably linked with the conflict in Ukraine . “We know that the West is directly involved in the Kiev regime’s attempts to strike our strategic aviation bases. The drones used for this were equipped and modernized with the assistance of NATO specialists. And now they also want to inspect our defense facilities,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his address to the Federal Assembly . This was his response to NATO’s call on RUSSIA to return to the work of the DCC and allow inspectors to its facilities. At the same time, Moscow assured that it would continue to comply with the restrictions on the START and that its decision to suspend it “may be reversible” – for this, Washington must “demonstrate political will and make good-faith efforts towards general de-escalation.”

The United States considered Russia's decision "legally incorrect" (there is no concept of "suspension of participation" in the treaty, only the procedure for withdrawal from it is stipulated) and stated that they would continue to consider Russia bound by obligations under the START. At the same time, from June 1, 2023, Washington stopped transmitting information to Moscow about the status and location of its strategic weapons.

The Biden administration proposed returning to consultations on strategic stability: in 2023, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan put forward the idea of ​​so-called compartmentalization, in which this topic would be discussed despite problems in other areas. Russia categorically rejected this format - Moscow does not agree to talk about strategic stability in isolation from the general context. "We must first of all make sure that the fundamentally hostile course of the United States towards Russia is changing for the better," explained Sergei Ryabkov, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia responsible for this area. According to him, in order to resume dialogue, the United States must abandon the idea of ​​inflicting a "strategic defeat" on Russia.

What is strategic stability and nuclear deterrence

According to the joint statement of the USSR and the usa in 1990, strategic stability is the balance of strategic forces of the two sides, in which there are no incentives to strike first. Nuclear deterrence assumes that the presence of nuclear weapons in a country guarantees its security and protection from an attack on it, since this attack will be followed by a nuclear response.

Trump, upon taking office, said he needed to start a dialogue on reducing nuclear weapons. “We’d like to see denuclearization,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 23, adding that he had talked to Putin about it and that CHINA , which will overtake the United States in terms of arsenal size in the next five years, could join in. “<...> President Putin really liked the idea of ​​dramatically reducing nuclear arsenals. And I think we could get the rest of the world to follow suit. And China would join in. China liked it, too.”

The following day, the Kremlin spoke out on the topic: according to the presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, Moscow is interested in starting arms control talks “as soon as possible.” “We have spoken about such interest before, so the ball is in the COURT of the Americans, who have ceased all substantive contacts with our country,” he said. That day, Putin also mentioned the topic of strategic stability, although he did so without any clarification. “In general, of course, we can have quite a lot of common ground with the current [US] administration, finding solutions to key issues of today. These include issues of strategic stability, and economic issues, by the way,” the Russian president said.

Russia already had experience of negotiations with Donald Trump on the New START: during his first term (2016–2020), the talk was about extending the treaty for five years without preconditions. The parties held several rounds of consultations, but, in fact, they talked about different things: Moscow was interested in extending the New START; Washington insisted that China join the bilateral document, which Beijing refused. On the eve of one of the consultations in Vienna, scheduled for June 2020, the American side published a photo from the negotiating room with Chinese flags on the X social network, writing that “the negotiations are about to begin,” but “China did not show up,” as if there was an agreement on its participation. As a result, the New START was extended in 2021 — Joe Biden agreed to do so in the first days of his presidency .

Are Russia and the US ready to restart the dialogue?

In the same year 2021, Russia and the United States began to discuss a new document that would replace the New START Treaty upon its expiration. They held two rounds of consultations in Geneva - on July 28 and September 30. The Russian and US delegations were headed by Sergei Ryabkov and First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Following the second round, they agreed to create two working groups - on the principles and objectives of future arms control and on potentials and actions that could have a strategic effect.

Ryabkov and Sherman met for the third time in Geneva on January 10, 2022. But then the discussion was about security guarantees that Moscow demanded from Washington at the end of 2021 (non-expansion of NATO to the east , its return to the positions before 1997, when the Russia-NATO Founding Act was signed, and legal guarantees that the alliance will not deploy its strike assets near Russian borders). After the start of full-scale military actions in Ukraine, the United States stopped the dialogue on strategic stability, but soon offered to resume it, to which Russia refused.

It is difficult to say whether it will be possible to resume consultations under the Trump administration: relations between Russia and the United States are currently in a transitional, fluid state, since Washington is completely revising its foreign policy, says Alexey Arbatov, HEAD of the Center for International Security at the IMEMO RAS. At the same time, despite a number of preliminary comments, Washington has not yet formulated its position on strategic stability. “Trump mentioned somewhere the denuclearization of Russia and China . This term itself is absolutely absurd in this context,” the expert noted in an interview with RBC. “We have long talked about the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and for some time about the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, but this term does not apply to great nuclear powers. They have thousands of nuclear warheads, 50 years of negotiating experience, dozens of agreements. President Trump probably doesn’t know this and says whatever comes to his mind: he was negotiating with the DPRK, there was the word “denuclearization,” and now he applied it to nuclear powers.”

The Russian position remains the same: it links consultations on the START Treaty with the US abandoning the “course of strategic defeat” in the context of the conflict in Ukraine. “Here, it seems, certain progress is possible,” Pavel Podvig, head of the “Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Weapons” project and senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (Geneva), told RBK. “The very fact that the new US administration is ready to discuss the issue of Ukraine may ultimately lead to the resumption of contacts on the START Treaty. Such contacts could be a way for both sides to signal a certain normalization of relations. But whether the parties will take advantage of this opportunity is still completely unclear.”

Arbatov draws attention to Putin's interview on January 24, in which the Russian president casually mentioned strategic stability. "We now have not only the 'Trump riddle', but also the 'Putin riddle'. Because if we have other topics for negotiations besides Ukraine, such as strategic stability, then what does that mean? Has our principled position, which we have held for the last two years, changed? Or has our assessment of American policy changed - do we no longer believe that it is aimed at the 'strategic defeat' of Russia?" the expert says. "We can only guess. No further clarification has been received yet."

Is it realistic to agree on a new document within a year?

START-3 replaced START-1 (signed in 1991 in Moscow, entered into force in 1994), which expired in 2009. Moscow and Washington were able to agree on it in about a year. However, under the current circumstances, experts interviewed by RBC say, it is impossible to agree on a new document or package of documents in such a short period of time: in the situation with START-3, bilateral relations and conditions were much more favorable.

"In addition, the initial positions of the parties are quite far from each other," Podvig explains the reasons for such an assessment. "Russia insists on the so-called security equation, which should take into account many different issues - non-nuclear strategic weapons, space, missile defense (especially now, after Trump's recent order). The US has a different interest: "new" Russian systems, non-strategic weapons." As an option, the expert notes, the parties could conclude an agreement that, with minor additions, would preserve the provisions of the expiring START.

Arbatov also believes that it is impossible to reach a new agreement now, either technically or politically. What could be agreed upon, he continues, is to adopt a joint political statement closer to 2026, in which the parties would indicate that the treaty has expired, cannot be extended, and would state that they will not exceed the START-3 ceilings until a new document is concluded or this statement is cancelled.

According to Podvig, it is quite possible for the US and Russia to agree to continue adhering to the terms of the New START, but without inspections and data exchange, it will be difficult to understand to what extent these agreements are being observed. “There are enough opponents on both sides of disarmament and arms control who will not fail to point this out,” the expert stipulates, adding that many in the US are in favor of increasing potential to counter China. “So it is quite difficult to imagine that the US will undertake an obligation not to increase its potential for the sake of an agreement with Russia.” Russia, however, does not have such great opportunities to increase its arsenals, and its leadership believes that there is no need for a quantitative increase, the expert says. “The current potential, taking into account its planned update, is quite sufficient to deter the US even if the US begins to increase the number of its weapons,” Podvig concluded.

What will happen if Moscow and Washington do not come to an agreement

The New START Treaty is the last bilateral arms control document (the US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2002 and 2019, respectively). And here the question arises of what will happen when the New START expires and nothing comes to replace it.

"This (arms control) is an area where events occur quite slowly, because nuclear systems are extremely complex and expensive," Arbatov explains. "But the situation will deteriorate noticeably. Our ideas about the forces and intentions of the other side will become blurred. Proclaimed nuclear doctrines, which contain a huge element of politics, are one thing. We can judge each other's real plans and intentions by knowing in detail everything that is happening with strategic forces."

The SALT and START treaties were the core of the global problem of nuclear arms control, the expert continues; without them, there is a risk that other, already multilateral mechanisms will begin to crumble, for example, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and then the fundamental Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). “If nuclear tests are resumed, the main compromise will collapse, under which non-nuclear countries undertake not to develop nuclear weapons, and the ‘nuclear five’ undertake to move towards nuclear disarmament. The resumption of nuclear tests completely refutes these obligations,” says Arbatov. “In this case, non-nuclear countries will understand that nuclear powers are counting on this type of weapon, and, in order to protect themselves, they themselves will begin to develop it.” This will be followed by a very rapid proliferation of such weapons: “Instead of the current ‘nine’, in ten years there will be 15 or even 20 countries in the world with nuclear weapons,” the expert concluded.

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