President Donald Trump on Thursday called for a new nuclear arms pact, as the New Start treaty between the US and Russia expired.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expired at midnight, raising fears of a renewed global arms race.
"I have stopped nuclear wars from breaking out across the world between Pakistan and India, Iran and Israel, and Russia and Ukraine," he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
"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 modernised treaty that can last long into the future."
Mr Trump's decision to allow the treaty to lapse is a major departure from decades of US-Russia arms control policy.
He told The New York Times last month that he would seek a “better agreement” that includes China and possibly other nuclear powers.
The treaty was last renewed in 2010, when former US president Barack Obama and former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev agreed to limit each country to a maximum of 1,550 stationed, long-range nuclear warheads on strategic delivery systems – a move the White House at the time hailed as “historic”.
The expiration comes despite efforts by Russia last year to maintain the treaty’s limits for another year. Moscow expressed regret over the treaty’s end, saying it “will act responsibly”, while stressing that without a formal agreement it no longer considers itself bound by the pact’s restrictions.
“What happens next depends on how events unfold,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. “In any case, the Russian Federation will maintain its responsible and attentive approach to strategic stability in the nuclear sphere and, as always, will be guided first and foremost by its national interests.”
The treaty's expiration also comes amid worsening US-Russia relations, driven largely by the war in Ukraine, and after years of collapse of the verification system.
Russia suspended its participation in the treaty’s verification clauses in 2023, ending on-site inspections and data exchanges. In response, the US stopped sending its own biannual nuclear force data to Russia.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the lapse a “grave moment for international peace and security”. In a statement on Friday, he warned that the absence of verifiable caps increases the risk of miscalculation and escalation, and urged both nations to return to negotiations on a new framework.
Pope Leo IV, in a rare comment from the Vatican on arms control, wrote on X: “I make an urgent appeal not to allow this instrument to lapse without seeking to ensure a concrete and effective follow-up.
“The current situation demands that everything possible be done to avert a new arms race. We must urgently replace the logic of fear and distrust with a shared ethic that can guide choices on behalf of the common good and make peace a heritage safeguarded by all.”
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the treaty’s expiration.
