Scoop: U.S. and Russia agree to observe New START nuclear pact after expiration

Kremlin economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner speak before a meeting with Putin in Moscow last month. Photo: Alexander Kazakov/pool/AFP via Getty 

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• Colin Demarest, AXIOS, [Feb 5]; 
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The U.S. and Russia are closing in on a deal to continue to observe the expiring New START arms control treaty beyond its expiration on Thursday, three sources familiar with those talks tell Axios.

• --Two of the sources cautioned that the draft plan still needed approval from both presidents. An additional source confirmed that negotiations had been taking place over the past 24 hours in Abu Dhabi, but not that an agreement had been reached.

Why it matters: New START is the last major guardrail constraining the nuclear arsenals of the two countries that together hold some 85% of the world's warheads.

Driving the news: President Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner negotiated on New START with Russian officials on the sidelines of Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi.

• --The treaty will still formally expire on Thursday, and the extension will not be legally formalized, a U.S. official said.
• --"We agreed with Russia to operate in good faith and to start a discussion about ways it could be updated," a U.S. official said.
• --Another source said the practical implications were that both sides would agree to observe the deal's terms for at least six months, during which time negotiations on a potential new deal would take place.
• The intrigue: U.S. European Command announced the resumption of military-to-military dialogue with Russia on Thursday. It was suspended in 2021 in the lead-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
• --That decision also emerged from the talks Kushner and Witkoff held with the Russians.

The big picture: New START caps the number of nuclear warheads the U.S. and Russia can deploy on submarines, missiles and bombers and includes important transparency mechanisms.

• --Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously suggested a short-term extension, but the Russian foreign ministry lamented in a highly critical statement on Wednesday that "our ideas have been deliberately left unanswered."
• --Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Russia was "ready for dialogue with the United States on limiting strategic offensive arms if Washington responds constructively." The White House declined to comment.

Zoom out: The primary reason the White House was skeptical of extending New START is that it doesn't constrain China, which has a much smaller but rapidly advancing arsenal.

• --"Obviously, the president's been clear in the past that in order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it's impossible to do something that doesn't include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile," Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated on Wednesday. 

• --Beijing has shown no interest in joining an agreement that would limit its nuclear program, and has little clear incentive to do so. Some experts think trilateral arms control won't work given the disparity in current arsenals, but that U.S.-China bilateral negotiations might be possible in future.
• --Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, though arms control was not mentioned in Trump's readout.

Between the lines: The talks over New START, went late into the night Wednesday, unfolded without the active participation of officials at the State Department who focus on arms control issues.

• --Under Secretary for Arms Control Thomas DiNanno plans to address a UN conference on disarmament Friday in Geneva.

What to watch: While the U.S. and Russian negotiators agreed to observe the spirit of New START, the parties have not formally signed an agreement to that effect.

• --One U.S. official cautioned that the agreement would have to be "a handshake" deal, because an extension is technically not permissible by law.
• --Another source said that nothing would be official until Trump and Putin endorsed it.