New START: Trump criticizes nuclear deal with Russia and defends new ‘improved’ treaty

New START: last nuclear agreement between Russia and the USA expires United States President Donald Trump used social media to criticize the New START treaty, which limited the number of nuclear warheads between the USA and Russia. The agreement expired this Thursday (5). Trump suggested negotiating a new treaty. New START was the last nuclear agreement in force between the US and Russia. Signed in 2010, the treaty was extended to expire in February 2026, but the two countries did not negotiate a new extension. In a publication in Truth Social, Trump stated that he prevented “nuclear wars from breaking out in different parts of the world”, but said that New START should not be renewed. According to the president, the treaty with Russia was “poorly negotiated by the United States” and was being “widely violated”. “We should put nuclear experts to work on a new, improved and modernized treaty capable of lasting long into the future,” he wrote. Earlier, the website Axios revealed that the US and Russia are negotiating an extension of the nuclear treaty. Three North American authorities interviewed by the report stated that the talks advanced on Wednesday (4), but there was still no consensus. Furthermore, a White House official told TV Globo reporter Raquel Krahenbuhl that “there will be news” about New START. The official also suggested that a new agreement should include China, hinting at possible behind-the-scenes negotiations. The source, however, did not provide further details or say when this “news” would be announced. The Russian government said on Thursday that it regrets the end of the treaty. A day earlier, the vice-president of the Russian Security Council, Dimitri Medvedev, used the topic to provoke the United States and said that “winter is coming”. What is New START? New START is the last arms control treaty between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. The agreement was signed in 2010 by Dimitri Medvedev, who was president of Russia at the time, and Barack Obama. The treaty came into force in 2011 and was extended in 2021 for another five years, following the inauguration of Joe Biden as president of the United States. Under the agreement, Moscow and Washington commit not to deploy more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and 700 long-range missiles and bombers. The text also provides for mutual inspections. Each country can carry out up to 18 inspections annually at strategic nuclear weapons sites. Inspections were suspended in March 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Negotiations to resume inspections were scheduled for November 2022, in Egypt, but were postponed by Russia and a new date was not defined.

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