The Kremlin said Friday that it wants to restart nuclear disarmament talks with U.S. President Donald Trump's administration "as soon as possible," after tensions over the war in Ukraine derailed negotiations.
Russia withdrew from the New START treaty — the last remaining arms control agreement with the U.S. — in 2023 amid a sharp deterioration in bilateral relations.
Both countries have indicated they will adhere to the treaty's warhead limits until 2026, but they have yet to agree on a replacement, and discussions have been stalled for months.
"We are interested in starting this negotiation process as soon as possible," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "The ball is in the Americans' court, who have stopped all substantive contacts."
President Vladimir Putin has escalated his nuclear rhetoric since launching the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, including signing a decree last year that lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
New START, which was signed in 2010, limited the U.S. and Russia to a maximum of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads each.
The collapse of the treaty follows the 2019 dissolution of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
That landmark agreement, signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, restricted both nations’ use of medium-range missiles, both conventional and nuclear.
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