Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Moscow would abide by nuclear arms limits for another year after the last nuclear pact with the United States expired in February.

Putin stated that ending the New START agreement would have negative consequences for global stability. Speaking at a meeting with members of Russia’s Security Council, he said Russia expected the US to follow Moscow’s lead and also uphold the treaty’s boundaries.

New START, signed by then US and Russian presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers. The agreement provides for extensive on-site inspections to verify compliance, but these have been suspended since 2020.

In February 2023, Putin suspended Moscow’s participation in the treaty, saying Russia could not allow US inspections of its nuclear facilities at a time when Washington and its NATO allies openly declared their goal of Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine.

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Moscow has stressed, however, that it is not withdrawing from the pact entirely and that it will continue to respect the upper limits on nuclear weapons set by the treaty. Before the suspension, Moscow argued that it wanted to keep the treaty, despite what it described as a “disastrous” US approach to arms control.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that it was necessary to maintain at least some “hints” of continued dialogue with Washington, no matter how grim the situation might appear at present.

Together, Russia and the United States account for about 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads. The future of New START has taken on added importance at a time when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has pushed the two countries closer to direct confrontation than at any time in the past 60 years.

Last September, Putin announced a review of Moscow’s nuclear doctrine, stating that a conventional attack by any non-nuclear nation backed by a nuclear power would be considered a joint attack on Russia.

The threat, discussed at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, was clearly intended to deter the West from allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with longer-range weapons, and it appears to significantly lower the threshold for possible use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

Putin did not specify whether the revised document envisages a nuclear response to such an attack. However, he emphasised that Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack that poses a critical threat to its sovereignty — vague wording that leaves wide scope for interpretation.

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