[1]
By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Yesterday afternoon at the Kremlin meeting of the Security Council, President Vladimir Putin proposed to extend the current strategic nuclear weapons limitations of the New START Treaty expiring in February 2026, for one more year into 2027. This is the time Putin is giving President Donald Trump to choose between his Golden Dome escalation in space or new terms of nuclear deescalation by treaty with Russia.
“Particular attention,” Putin declared [3], “must be directed towards US plans to expand strategic components of its missile defence system, including preparations for the deployment of interceptors in outer space. We believe that the practical implementation of such destabilising measures could nullify our efforts to maintain the status quo in the field of strategic offensive arms. We will respond appropriately in this case.”
“In order to prevent the emergence of a new strategic arms race and to preserve an acceptable degree of predictability and restraint, we consider it reasonable to maintain at this turbulent time the status quo established under New START. Accordingly, Russia is prepared to continue observing the treaty’s central quantitative restrictions for one year after February 5, 2026.”
This isn’t Putin’s first offer of a timeout for Trump.
On October 16, 2020, Putin had announced [4] “to extend the [START] Treaty now in effect unconditionally for at least a year in order to have a chance to hold substantive talks on all the parameters of problems that are regulated by treaties of this kind, lest we leave our countries and all nations of the world with a vested interest in maintaining strategic stability without such a fundamental document as the Strategic Offensive Arms Limitation Treaty.”
Trump rejected [5] that offer before he lost the election the following month.
President Joseph Biden then accepted it and on February 3, 2021, the State Department and Foreign Ministry exchanged papers extending the New START terms for five years until 2026 [6].
Putin’s statement of yesterday is his explicit reply to Trump’s announcement of Golden Dome four months ago, on May 20 [7]. “There’s never been anything like this,” Trump said. “This is something that’s going to be very protective. I think you can rest assured there’ll be nothing like this. Nobody else is capable of building it either.”
According to Trump, the new Golden Dome system – to be part-paid by Canada, he added – “will integrate with our existing defence capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term. So we’ll have it done in about three years [2028]. Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space, and we will have the best system ever built. As you know, we helped Israel with theirs and it was very successful and now we have technology that’s even far advanced from that, but including hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles and advanced cruise missiles, all of them will be knocked out of the air.”
“We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland and the success rate is very close to 100 percent, which is incredible when you think of it, you’re shooting bullets out of the air. I’m also pleased to report that the One Big, Beautiful Bill will include $25 billion for the Golden Dome to help construction get underway [7]”.
Trump was asked by a reporter: “Have you addressed Russia’s ventures in space with a space based nuclear weapon and told Putin to stop in your conversations with him?” Trump replied: “We haven’t discussed it. But at the right time we will.”
Putin has just called time. Trump has seventeen months.
Tune into the discussion [8] with Nima Alkhorshid on the meaning — also the political timing — of Putin’s timeout whistle for Trump.
These are the terms of the expiring New START Treaty [9].
[10]Source: https://www.state.gov/new-start-treaty [9]
Analysis of the terms and controversies of the treaty’s interpretation by the Congressional Research Office as of 2019 [11]. The START treaties have limited the number of deployed strategic nuclear launch weapons (bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles and their associated warheads, not their deployment in space. The treaties do not directly regulate the number of satellites or other non-weaponized space assets, although they do impose limits on the space-based component of anti-ballistic missile systems. Space-based missile limitations were incorporated in the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972, with the amendments of 1997; the US withdrew from the treaty in 2003 [12]. Trump withdrew from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2018-2019 [13].
Here is the full Oval Office presentation of the Golden Dome on May 20 [7]:
[14]Analysis of the presentation, including identification of the US general in command, Michael Guetlein (extreme left) as a former Elon Musk employee, can be read here [15].
Follow Theodore Postol’s analysis [16] of the trillion-dollar cost of the Golden Dome system which can be duped by Russian or Chinese capabilities and cannot be relied upon to work effectively:
[17]Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJEnqn5sdyo [16]
“Given that there are many imaginative ways to confuse the defender, and the defender may only learn about the method used at the moment of the attack, the United States may end up launching some of its half-billion-dollar interceptors at chaff wires, decoys mimicking the signature of reentry vehicles, balloons, or bomblets, quickly exhausting the limited supply of interceptors without fully eliminating the threat” — read the new analysis [18], published in June by the US Arms Control Association, of the design faults, strategic countermeasures available to Russia and China, and limitless costs of Trump’s system. “
“Fully eliminating the danger of nuclear war is not a plausible choice. Even if Golden Dome is fully assembled and achieves 90 percent interception rate, 10 percent of incoming warheads would still get through. In the event of a major-scale attack, at least 60 Chinese and 150 Russian warheads would still strike targets in the United States. The resulting fallout would inflict catastrophic damage across the country and trigger a U.S. nuclear response, regardless of the adversary’s targeting plans. Although there is no evidence a conflict between nuclear-weapon states would just fizzle out, there are plenty of indicators to suggest otherwise…National ballistic missile defense is technologically unfeasible, prohibitively costly, and bad for deterrence. Although it may be efficient in ‘mopping-up’ missiles from an adversary’s limited retaliatory nuclear strike (in the unlikely case a hypothetical U.S. nuclear first strike manages to take out most of the other capabilities), this scenario also presumes that adversaries would passively observe the massive undertaking required to establish an effective national BMD system.”
“A defense with 90 percent effectiveness would allow only 10 out of 100 warheads to go through, but a strike consisting of 1,000 warheads would leak 100. While in a static case a missile defense system could enhance deterrence by reducing the adversary’s confidence that an attack will be successful, if it is not perfect, it also creates incentives for a nuclear arms race. Unless constrained by resources, adversaries will attempt to regain lost confidence by increasing the size of their nuclear arsenals or by modernizing to improve delivery vehicles [19].”
[20]Source: https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2025-06/features/dome-delusion-many-costs-ballistic-missile-defense [19]
Now read Putin’s reply of September 22 [3]: “The New START Treaty will expire on February 5, 2026, signalling the imminent end of the last international accord directly limiting nuclear missile capabilities. A complete renunciation of this treaty’s legacy would, from many points, be a grave and short-sighted mistake. It would also have adverse implications for the objectives of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In order to prevent the emergence of a new strategic arms race and to preserve an acceptable degree of predictability and restraint, we consider it reasonable to maintain at this turbulent time the status quo established under New START. Accordingly, Russia is prepared to continue observing the treaty’s central quantitative restrictions for one year after February 5, 2026.”
“Following that date, based on a careful assessment of the situation, we will make a definite decision on whether to uphold these voluntary self-limitations. We believe that this measure is only feasible if the United States acts in a similar spirit and refrains from steps that would undermine or disrupt the existing balance of deterrence. In this connection, I would like to ask the relevant agencies to maintain close oversight of American activities related to the START arsenal in the first place. Particular attention must be directed towards US plans to expand strategic components of its missile defence system, including preparations for the deployment of interceptors in outer space. We believe that the practical implementation of such destabilising measures could nullify our efforts to maintain the status quo in the field of strategic offensive arms. We will respond appropriately in this case.”