

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Yesterday afternoon at the Kremlin meeting of the Security Council, President Vladimir Putin proposed to extend the current strategic nuclear weapons limitations of the New START Treaty expiring in February 2026, for one more year into 2027. This is the time Putin is giving President Donald Trump to choose between his Golden Dome escalation in space or new terms of nuclear deescalation by treaty with Russia.
“Particular attention,” Putin declared, “must be directed towards US plans to expand strategic components of its missile defence system, including preparations for the deployment of interceptors in outer space. We believe that the practical implementation of such destabilising measures could nullify our efforts to maintain the status quo in the field of strategic offensive arms. We will respond appropriately in this case.”
“In order to prevent the emergence of a new strategic arms race and to preserve an acceptable degree of predictability and restraint, we consider it reasonable to maintain at this turbulent time the status quo established under New START. Accordingly, Russia is prepared to continue observing the treaty’s central quantitative restrictions for one year after February 5, 2026.”
This isn’t Putin’s first offer of a timeout for Trump.
On October 16, 2020, Putin had announced “to extend the [START] Treaty now in effect unconditionally for at least a year in order to have a chance to hold substantive talks on all the parameters of problems that are regulated by treaties of this kind, lest we leave our countries and all nations of the world with a vested interest in maintaining strategic stability without such a fundamental document as the Strategic Offensive Arms Limitation Treaty.”
Trump rejected that offer before he lost the election the following month.
President Joseph Biden then accepted it and on February 3, 2021, the State Department and Foreign Ministry exchanged papers extending the New START terms for five years until 2026.
Putin’s statement of yesterday is his explicit reply to Trump’s announcement of Golden Dome four months ago, on May 20. “There’s never been anything like this,” Trump said. “This is something that’s going to be very protective. I think you can rest assured there’ll be nothing like this. Nobody else is capable of building it either.”
According to Trump, the new Golden Dome system – to be part-paid by Canada, he added – “will integrate with our existing defence capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term. So we’ll have it done in about three years [2028]. Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space, and we will have the best system ever built. As you know, we helped Israel with theirs and it was very successful and now we have technology that’s even far advanced from that, but including hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles and advanced cruise missiles, all of them will be knocked out of the air.”
“We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland and the success rate is very close to 100 percent, which is incredible when you think of it, you’re shooting bullets out of the air. I’m also pleased to report that the One Big, Beautiful Bill will include $25 billion for the Golden Dome to help construction get underway”.
Trump was asked by a reporter: “Have you addressed Russia’s ventures in space with a space based nuclear weapon and told Putin to stop in your conversations with him?” Trump replied: “We haven’t discussed it. But at the right time we will.”
Putin has just called time. Trump has seventeen months.
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