A New Nuclear Arms Race: An Expert Explains Why the U.S. Doesn’t Want to Extend New START

Political strategist Mikhail Sheitelman explained that only Russia stands to lose from the expiration of the New START (START III) treaty, because it cannot build new warheads, while the United States and China benefit, Politeka reports.

He said this in his blog.

“February 5, 2026 is, strangely enough, a historic day. It is very likely that this day will become historic—that it will mark the possible beginning of a nuclear war. Not with our participation at all; Ukraine has nothing to do with it, but between Russia, the U.S., and the Chinese. Because today, for the first time in many decades, we are living on a planet where strategic nuclear weapons are not limited in any way,” Mikhail Sheitelman claims.

According to the expert, Russia tried very hard to revive the corpse of New START. First, Putin said he was ready, out of sheer generosity, to automatically extend the treaty for a year. Then Peskov said they were still waiting for a response from the U.S. Lavrov went to the UN to wait for that response—but no one ever received it. Then, Sheitelman continues, journalists asked Trump about it, and he said he was doing just fine without that treaty, that the U.S. would build warheads, and that China should also be subject to limits.

“And the Russians were stunned, because they don’t know how to build new warheads. Those were built by Soviet scientists and engineers, and they have neither Soviet scientists nor Soviet engineers—no one at all. They don’t have the money to build all of this. Russia’s entire nuclear advantage is coming to an end. So they were left with their last warhead—Medvedev, who immediately posted the words ‘Winter is coming.’ He writes that for the first time since 1972, Russia and the United States have no treaty limiting strategic nuclear forces, lists those treaties as something that now belongs to the past, and adds a screenshot from the TV series Game of Thrones with the Night King, the leader of the army of the living dead. Apparently, that’s how he imagines the future of the Russian Federation—an army of the living dead—after the U.S. eventually increases its nuclear arsenal and possibly uses it against Russia,” Mikhail Sheitelman says.

Trump, he notes, is ready for a nuclear arms race; he is prepared to invest money in it in order to eliminate Russia and China in one fell swoop. As the expert reasons, this is what was discussed during the conversation between Putin and Xi: Trump does not want to sign a treaty without China, while China itself wants to increase the number of its warheads so as not to depend on Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

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