The New START treaty expired on February 4, 2026, and Russia wasted no time making its position clear. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that both Russia and the US are “no longer bound by any obligations” under the agreement, formally closing the book on decades of structured nuclear arms control.
This is the first time in more than half a century that no legally binding limitations exist on the strategic nuclear arsenals of the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
What the treaty actually did
New START, formally known as the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, entered into force on February 5, 2011. It capped each nation at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, 700 deployed delivery systems, and 800 launchers.
The treaty was extended once, pushing its expiration to February 4, 2026. But the relationship between Washington and Moscow deteriorated sharply after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and by 2023, Russia had already suspended the treaty’s verification measures. The inspections and data exchanges that gave both sides a window into each other’s arsenals went dark.
