Moscow will observe the limits of the last nuclear arms pact with the United States that expired last week as long as it sees that Washington is doing the same, Russia’s top diplomat said Wednesday (February 11, 2026).

The New START treaty expired on February 5, 2026, leaving no restrictions on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century and fuelling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last year declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit, but U.S. President Donald Trump has argued that he wants China to be a part of a new pact — something Beijing has rejected.

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Speaking on Wednesday (February 11, 2026) to the parliament’s lower house, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that even though the U.S. hasn’t responded to Putin’s offer, Russia will respect New START’s caps for as long as it sees that the U.S. observes them too.

“The moratorium declared by the president will remain as long as the U.S. doesn’t exceed these limits,” Mr. Lavrov told lawmakers. “We will act in a responsible and balanced way on the basis of analysis of the U.S. military policies.”

He added that “we have reason to believe that the United States is in no hurry to abandon these limits and that they will be observed for the foreseeable future.”

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“We will closely monitor how things are actually unfolding,” Mr. Lavrov said. “If our American colleagues’ intention to maintain some kind of cooperation on this is confirmed, we will work actively on a new agreement and consider the issues that have remained outside strategic stability agreements.”

Mr. Lavrov’s statement followed a report by Axios claiming Russian and U.S. negotiators discussed a possible informal deal to observe the pact’s limits for at least six months during talks last week in Abu Dhabi. Asked to comment on the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday (February 6, 2026) that any such extension could only be formal, adding that “it’s hard to imagine any informal extension in this sphere.”

At the same time, Mr. Peskov confirmed that Russian and U.S. negotiators discussed future nuclear arms control in Abu Dhabi where delegations from Moscow, Kyiv and Washington held two days of talks on a peace settlement in Ukraine.

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“There is an understanding, and they talked about it in Abu Dhabi, that both parties will take responsible positions and both parties realize the need to start talks on the issue as soon as possible,” Mr. Peskov said.

New START, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, was the last of a long series of agreements between Moscow and Washington to limit their nuclear arsenals, starting with SALT I in 1972.

New START restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers deployed and ready for use. It was originally set to expire in 2021 but was extended for five years. The pact envisioned sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance, although they stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed.

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In February 2023, Mr. Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia couldn’t allow U.S. inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies openly declared they wanted Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine. But the Kremlin also emphasised it wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.

In September, Mr. Putin offered to keep the New START’s limits for another year to buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement.

Even as New START expired, the U.S. and Russia agreed on February 5 to re-establish high-level, military-to-military dialogue following a meeting between senior officials from both sides in Abu Dhabi, the U.S. military command in Europe said. The link was suspended in 2021 as relations grew increasingly strained before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

The Kremlin warned on Tuesday (February 3, 2026) that the world was heading into a “dangerous” moment as the last U.S.-Russia nuclear treaty is set to expire this week.

New START, the last nuclear treaty between Washington and Moscow after decades of agreements dating to the Cold War, is set to expire on Thursday (February 5, 2026), and with it restrictions on the two top nuclear powers.

“In just a few days, the world will be in a more dangerous position than it has ever been before,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, including from AFP, during a daily briefing.

The Kremlin, which has offered a one-year extension of the treaty, said “we still haven’t received a response from the Americans to this initiative.”

If the treaty is not extended, the world’s top two nuclear powers would “be left without a fundamental document that would limit and control these arsenals,” for the first time.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who cut many international agreements limiting the United States, said in September that an extension of the New START “sounds like a good idea,” but little has changed since then.

The treaty, which included a monitoring mechanism, was signed in 2010 by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama.

But Russia suspended monitoring inspections during the COVID-19 pandemic and talks on extending the agreement have broken down in recent years due to tensions over the Ukraine war.

Moscow had also accused Washington of impeding monitoring missions on U.S. soil.

In 2023, Russia froze its participation in New START, but it has continued to voluntarily adhere to the limits set in the treaty.

Moscow has last year tested its latest nuclear weapon carriers without atomic warheads, and Mr. Trump said he was moving two nuclear submarines closer to Russia.