Trump Says Putin’s Nuclear Treaty Extension Proposal Sounds Like a Good Idea

U.S. President Donald Trump has welcomed a Russian proposal to voluntarily maintain limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons.

Trump, speaking to reporters as he departed the White House on Oct. 5, said the offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin “sounds like a good idea.”

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START agreement, signed in 2010 and implemented the following year, limits each side to 700 deployed long-range missiles and bombers, 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, and 800 total launchers.

The treaty also places restrictions on Russia’s most advanced long-range weapons, including the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle and the Sarmat intercontinental missile, which can reach U.S. territory in about half an hour.

Unless extended, the pact will expire in February 2026.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed Trump’s response.

“We believe that this already gives grounds for optimism that the United States will support this initiative of President Putin,” he told reporters on Oct. 6.

Slow-moving discussions come against the backdrop of continuing war in Ukraine and escalating rhetoric on both sides.

Last month, Putin told his national security advisers that Russia is prepared to continue adhering to the “central quantitative limits” under the treaty. On Oct. 5, he said that Moscow’s relationship with Washington would be destroyed if the United States were to supply Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for long-range strikes deep into Russian territory.

The two presidents met in Alaska in August, as part of a U.S.-led effort to bring Russia and Ukraine into peace talks. Since then, Trump has called Russia a “paper tiger” for failing to achieve its military objectives in Ukraine, while Putin has used the same phrase to describe NATO because of its inability to halt Russia’s advance.

China, UK, France in the Spotlight

Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in broadening nuclear talks to include China.

He raised the idea of a trilateral summit with Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping earlier this year, arguing that Beijing’s growing arsenal must be part of any future arms-control framework. Beijing rejected the idea.

Moscow has said that the arsenals of the UK and France—two nuclear powers aligned with Washington—will eventually have to be addressed.

Peskov told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency last month that talks should begin bilaterally.

“Of course the negotiations should be started at the bilateral level. After all, the New START Treaty is a bilateral document,” he said. “But in the future, it will not be possible to abstract ourselves from these arsenals. Especially since these arsenals are part of the overall problem of global European security and strategic stability.”

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States and Russia together hold roughly 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Russia has a total inventory of 5,459 nuclear warheads, and the United States has 5,177, according to the Federation of Atomic Scientists. Both figures include retired warheads.

China follows with about 600, and France, the UK, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea possess much smaller stockpiles.

Biden’s Extension, Russia’s Suspension

The New START has faced repeated political turbulence.

In 2021, shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden took office, the treaty was extended by five years. In February 2023, Putin announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the New START.

In September, Putin told his security advisers that the suspension followed “the extremely hostile policy of the Biden administration, which violated the basic principles on which [the] treaty was founded.”

U.S. officials warn that the absence of verification undermines transparency and could erode trust over time.

The State Department has said that without on-site inspections, Washington’s ability to monitor Russia’s nuclear forces will diminish, limiting the information needed to shape U.S. nuclear policy.

Putin said that once an extension is in place, Moscow would decide whether to keep honoring the voluntary limits after reviewing the situation.