Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s new ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Vienna, told TASS on Dec. 31, 2025 that Moscow is still awaiting a U.S. response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New START offer, to voluntarily maintain the warhead and launcher limits specified in the treaty, even after it expires on Feb. 5, 2026. He argued that arms control remains “one of the spheres where Donald Trump’s new policies have not yet led to the review of old paradigms.”
“For years, if not decades, the Americans have been consistently destroying the earlier groundwork which took so much effort to create. As a result, the only treaty that we currently have is the New START, which expires in February 2026,” said Polyanskiy. “We expect the Americans to eventually respond to Vladimir Putin’s initiative to maintain numerical limits under the New START in the form of voluntary self-restrictions.”
