# New START expires, removing last US-Russia nuclear limits
The last nuclear weapons control treaty between the United States and Russia has expired, raising fresh fears of a renewed arms race on the 2026-02-05 event date.
BBC News reported that New START, the strategic arms reduction treaty signed in 2010, had limited deployed strategic nuclear warheads for both countries and included transparency measures such as data exchanges, notifications and on-site inspections. With its expiry at midnight GMT, the agreement no longer binds Washington or Moscow to those limits.
The treaty's end matters because it was the last active bilateral accord designed to slow the buildup of the world's two largest nuclear arsenals. The BBC report said the deal capped each side at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and was one of a small number of agreements intended to reduce the risk of catastrophic nuclear war.
The reaction from the international system was immediate in tone if not in substance. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the expiration a grave moment for international peace and security and urged the United States and Russia to negotiate a successor framework without delay. The BBC also reported that Pope Leo urged the two countries to renew the treaty, warning that the present global situation required action to avert a new arms race.
There is, however, an important legal and political distinction. Russia had already suspended participation in the treaty three years earlier, but both countries were still thought to be observing its central limits until the expiry date. The BBC report said the foreign ministry in Moscow later signaled that Russia no longer considered itself bound by the treaty's obligations or symmetrical declarations and said it remained ready to take military-technical measures if it saw additional threats.
The report also points to the broader strategic problem that followed the treaty's lapse. The US, Russia and China are all modernizing long-range weapons, while Washington says any future agreement should include China and Moscow argues France and the UK should also be part of any new framework. BBC cited experts warning that the collapse of this arms-control architecture makes a new deal harder, not easier.
What happened on the event date is therefore both simple and consequential: New START expired, removing the last formal US-Russia limits on deployed strategic nuclear warheads. What comes next depends on whether the two sides can restore some version of restraint before the current competitive buildup becomes harder to reverse.
