For Immediate Release: September 22, 2025
Media Contact: Daryl Kimball, ACA Executive Director, (202) 462-8270 ext. 107
(Washington, D.C.)—Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that “Russia is ready to continue to adhere to the central quantitative restrictions under the [New] START Treaty for one year after February 5, 2026.”
In response, ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball said “President Putin’s proposal is a positive and welcome move, and one that many of us have been advocating. More nuclear weapons will not make the U.S., Russia, or the world safer.”
“If Putin and Trump agree to maintain current strategic nuclear limits after the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expires and launch talks on more ambitious nuclear disarmament measures, they can help reduce the most immediate existential security threat facing the world,” he said.
“An agreement not to exceed the current strategic nuclear limits would reduce tensions, forestall a costly arms race that no one can win, create diplomatic leverage to curb the buildup of China’s arsenal, and buy time for talks on a broader, more durable, treaty,” Kimball said
“We strongly encourage President Trump to reciprocate Putin’s proposal to maintain existing limits on their long-range nuclear weapons, and we urge the Kremlin and the White House to immediately direct their teams to begin negotiations on a new more comprehensive agreement or agreements that address difficult issues with which the two sides have long struggled.”
For more than a decade, Russia and the United States have failed to engage in meaningful talks designed to verifiably reduce their strategic nuclear arsenals; maintain restrictions on intermediate-range forces and account for and limit sub-strategic nuclear weapons; and establish common-sense limits on strategic missile defense, space-based weapons, and long-range conventional strike weapons.”
“To broaden the disarmament effort, Putin and Trump could also call on China, France, and the UK to report on their total nuclear weapons holdings and freeze their nuclear stockpiles, provided Russia and the United States pursue deeper verifiable reductions in their far larger arsenals,” Kimball suggested.
“A Trump-Putin pledge to maintain mutual restraints on their already massive strategic nuclear arsenals, combined with the resumption of formal U.S.-Russian talks on further nuclear arms reductions, would be a positive and essential step for U.S. and world security,” said Thomas Countryman, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation.
The 2010 New START agreement—the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms reduction agreement between the United States and Russia—will expire in 136 days. The agreement limits each side to no more than 1,550 deployed warheads on no more than 700 deployed land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), and strategic bombers.
When previously asked about the expiration of the treaty, Trump said on July 25: “That is a big problem for the world, when you take off nuclear restrictions that’s a big problem.”
Additional Resources:
“U.S.-Russian Nuclear Arms Control Agreements at a Glance“ an ACA Fact Sheet
“After the New START Treaty,” Deep Cuts Commission Fact Sheet, Sept. 15, 2025
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The Arms Control Association is an independent, membership-based organization dedicated to providing authoritative information and practical policy solutions to address the threats posed by the world’s most dangerous weapons. ACA is one of many organizations that has recently issued a “New Call to Halt and Reverse the Nuclear Arms Race.”