Russia welcomes Trump's remark on Putin's offer to preserve nuclear arms limits

The Kremlin on Monday welcomed remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump who said that President Vladimir Putin's proposal to voluntarily preserve nuclear arms limits set out in the New START treaty for another year sounded like a good idea.

Putin in September offered to voluntarily maintain for one year the limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons set out in the New START Treaty, the last remaining Russian-U.S. arms control treaty, which expires on Feb. 5, 2026.

When asked about the proposal, Trump told reporters on Sunday that it "sounds like a good idea to me."

"Of course, we welcome such a statement," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. "We believe that this already gives grounds for optimism that the United States will support this initiative of President Putin."

Russia and the United States are by far the biggest nuclear powers with approximately 87 percent of the world’s total inventory of nuclear weapons - more than enough to destroy the world many times over. Russia has a total inventory of 5,459 nuclear warheads while the United States has 5,177, according to the Federation of Atomic Scientists.