Trump rejects Putin offer of one-year extension of New START deployment limits
WASHINGTON/MOSCOW: US President Donald Trump on Thursday rejected an offer from his Russian counterpart to voluntarily extend the caps on strategic nuclear weapons deployments after the treaty that held them in check for more than two decades expired.
“Rather than extend “New START … we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Arms control advocates warn that the expiration of the treaty will fuel an accelerated nuclear arms race, while US opponents say the pact constrained the US ability to deploy enough weapons to deter nuclear threats posed by both Russia and China.
Trump’s post was in response to a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the sides to adhere for a year to the 2010 accord’s limit of 1,550 warheads on 700 delivery systems — missiles, aircraft and submarines.
New START was the last in a series of arms control treaties between the world’s two largest nuclear weapons powers dating back more than half a century to the Cold War. It allowed for only a single extension, which Putin and former US President Joe Biden agreed to for five years in 2021.
Negotiations had been taking place over the past 24 hours in Abu Dhabi but an agreement had not been reached, Axios reported Thursday, citing sources.
The US military’s European Command said on Thursday the US and Russia had agreed in Abu Dhabi to resume a high-level military-to-military dialogue.
Also, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said peace talks with Russia, backed by the US, would continue in the near future after negotiators ended a second round of discussions in Abu Dhabi.
The Axios report on New START said it was unclear whether the agreement to observe the treaty’s terms for an additional period of time, possibly six months, would be enshrined in any formal way.
In his post, Trump called New START “a badly negotiated deal” that he said “is being grossly violated,” an apparent reference to Putin’s 2023 decision to halt on-site inspections and other measures designed to reassure each side that the other was complying with the treaty.
Putin cited US support for Ukraine’s battle against Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion as the reason for his decision.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the US would continue talks with Russia.
