Russia Welcomes Trump’s Blessing of Proposal to Extend Caps on Nuclear Weapons

The Kremlin on Monday said it welcomed President Trump’s stated willingness to extend mutual caps on long-range nuclear weapons, demarcating an area where negotiations between Russia and the United States could proceed despite stalled talks on ending the war in Ukraine.

Last month, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia proposed extending for one year the existing limits on the number of deployed long-range nuclear weapons under the New START treaty, which expires in February. On Sunday, Mr. Trump said the proposal “sounds like a good idea to me.”

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, welcomed Mr. Trump’s positive reaction during a call with reporters on Monday, saying it “provides grounds for optimism that the United States supports Putin’s initiative.”

An extension of the caps could help Russia avoid an expensive nuclear arms race at a time when its war against Ukraine, and the resulting international sanctions, have put the country under intense economic pressure. Moscow plans to spend less next year on its military than it is spending this year, despite the ongoing war, but security and defense will still account for 38 percent of its federal budget.

Keeping the warhead limitations in place could also offer the Kremlin a track for negotiating with Washington matters unrelated to Ukraine, which Moscow has been seeking unsuccessfully since Mr. Trump returned to the White House in January. Mr. Trump has largely refrained from cutting any major deals with Russia while Mr. Putin holds out on ending his war against Ukraine.

Signed in 2010, the New START treaty limits the number of deployed long-range nuclear warheads to 1,550 for each country, and caps the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombers that can deliver them. It does not apply to shorter-range weapons.

Weeks after taking office in 2021, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. extended the treaty with Russia for five years. The pact’s provisions allow it to be extended only once. So while Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin may agree to keep abiding by its caps for an additional year, a new treaty would be needed to continue the limits formally after the current pact expires on Feb. 5. That would require negotiations and approval by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate.

Much of the treaty, however, is already in tatters.

It requires each country to accept inspections of nuclear sites every year by the other signatory. Those visits were suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic and never resumed.

The pact also requires each country to provide data and notifications about its nuclear forces. In 2023, Mr. Putin formally declared that Russia was suspending its participation in the treaty, apart from the numerical limits on deployed weapons. After Russia stopped providing data, the United States followed suit.

Mr. Putin has not said whether he would be amenable to reviving the inspections and data-sharing elements of the treaty.

Though diminished, the pact is the last nuclear agreement remaining between Russia and the United States. Other agreements that sought to limit nuclear arms and risk have eroded over the years amid poor relations between Moscow and Washington.