Mr. Putin announced to stop participating in the New START treaty, what risks will happen?

New START, the last remaining treaty limiting the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States, was already on shaky ground even before President Vladimir Putin announced on February 21 that Moscow would suspend its participation in the pact.

Reuters reported that Russia's suspension of participation in New START but not its complete withdrawal has raised concerns among security analysts about the risk of a new arms race between the two countries, as well as prompting other nuclear powers such as China, India and Pakistan to step up their arsenals.

Russia's Yars RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile appears during a military parade. Photo: Cyprus Mail

In 2021, the administration of US President Joe Biden reached an agreement to extend New START with Russia until February 2026. The agreement focuses on limiting the number of strategic nuclear warheads that Russia and the US can deploy.

According to nuclear experts, New START does not have a provision allowing either side to "suspend" participation as President Putin declared, but only to implement or withdraw.

Meanwhile, Mr Putin said Russia would only resume talks with the US once the nuclear arsenals of France and Britain were also taken into account. But analysts said Russia’s conditions would not be accepted, as they would lead to a complete rewriting of the New START treaty.

William Alberque at the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Moscow had decided it could survive without New START, and sought to blame Washington.

“Russia calculated that the treaty would die and held the United States responsible for the damage,” Alberque said in a telephone interview.

Also according to Alberque, New START limits the number of warheads on each missile that either side can deploy, so the treaty's collapse could immediately multiply the number of warheads many times over.

According to estimates by the Federation of American Scientists, Russia has a total of 5,977 nuclear warheads, while the US has 5,428.

“Both sides could immediately go from 1,550 deployed strategic warheads to 4,000, and that could happen overnight,” Alberque added.

Extreme instability

Putin said the decision to suspend participation in New START was due to “unreasonable” US demands to inspect Russian nuclear facilities. According to him, NATO is supporting Ukraine in attacking Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

Putin's statement referred to Russia's previous accusation that Ukraine carried out attacks in December 2022 on Engels airport near Saratov, 730km southeast of Moscow, where Russian strategic bombers operate.

Although he did not provide evidence for the above accusation, Mr. Putin said that NATO experts had "modernized" unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to carry out the attack.

Ukraine has yet to confirm whether it was responsible for the attacks on targets on Russian territory.

If New START is scrapped, it would mark a return to Cold War-style guesswork about an adversary's capabilities and intentions, said James Cameron at the Oslo Nuclear Project.

“A major instability in the relationship where both sides act on the worst-case scenario, adding more complex systems and plans to use them, ultimately leads to more instability and an increased risk of nuclear weapons being used,” Mr Cameron said.

Both Mr. Alberque and Cameron said that it was possible that Russia could resume nuclear weapons testing in the near future.

According to Mr. Alberque, the US and the former Soviet Union used nuclear tests during the Cold War "to signal to each other when they were angry".

Any Russian nuclear test would be seen as an escalation of tensions in Ukraine and “an attempt to signal a readiness to use nuclear weapons,” Cameron said. In the 12 months since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly reminded the West that Moscow has weapons of mass destruction and extended its nuclear umbrella to areas of Ukraine that Russia has seized control of.

If New START collapses, or the two sides fail to extend it before it expires in February 2026, it will mark the end of a more than half-century-old arms control treaty between Russia and the United States. It will also send a signal to countries that have or will have nuclear weapons, such as India, Pakistan and China.

“The situation could be much more dangerous than the Cold War as more countries join the race in greater numbers. That would be terrible for global security,” Mr. Alberque said.