AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Mr. Putin said Russia didn’t want to provoke a strategic arms race with the United States, but his offer is limited in scope.Listen · 8:58 min In this photograph distributed by the Russian state news agency Sputnik, President Vladimir V. Putin chairs a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on Monday.Credit...Pool photo by Alexander KazakovSept. 22, 2025President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Monday that he was prepared to extend existing limits on the number of deployed long-range nuclear weapons for one more year as long as the United States did the same, a move that could give Moscow and Washington time to negotiate a new version of the last remaining arms control treaty between them.Speaking at a meeting of his security council at the Kremlin, Mr. Putin said that Russia wanted to “avoid provoking a further strategic arms race.” But his motives may involve a more complex brew of issues, including avoiding an expensive buildup in deployed weapons at a time when Russia’s coffers are being drained by the war in Ukraine, and a desire to draw the United States into negotiations on an issue apart from the war.He may also be seeking to slow, or kill, President Trump’s effort to build what Mr. Trump calls a “Golden Dome” missile defense system, some experts said after examining the Russian leader’s somewhat elliptical wording.“We believe that this measure will become viable only if the United States acts in a similar way,” Mr. Putin said in televised remarks, “and does not take steps that undermine or violate the existing balance of deterrence potentials.” The Dome, if it turns out to be technologically possible and affordable, could dramatically affect that balance.Mr. Trump has said virtually nothing about what the United States plans to do when the New START nuclear treaty expires in February. Under its terms, it can be extended only once, for five years, a step that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took weeks after assuming office in 2021. A new treaty would presumably take months or years to negotiate, and would require approval of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate — a conclusion hard to imagine in today’s political atmosphere.After Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin met in Alaska in mid-August, Mr. Trump said they had discussed “nuclear disarmament” but gave no details. An informal extension of New START would not bring about disarmament, but would presumably delay, at least for a year, its opposite: a major nuclear buildup.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT