By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV and JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian and U.S. negotiators discussed the expiration of the last remaining nuclear arms pact between the two countries and agreed on the need to quickly launch new arms control talks, the Kremlin said Friday.

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The New START treaty terminated Thursday, leaving no caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century and fueling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Russian and U.S. negotiators discussed the issue in the United Arab Emirates, where Russian, Ukrainian and U.S. delegations held two days of talks on a peace settlement in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday.

“There is an understanding, and they talked about it in Abu Dhabi, that both parties will take responsible positions and both parties realize the need to start talks on the issue as soon as possible,” Peskov said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared his readiness to stick to the treaty’s limits for another year if Washington followed suit. U.S. President Donald Trump has ignored the offer and argued he

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wants China to be a part of a new pact, which Beijing has rebuffed.

“Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ (A badly negotiated deal by the United States that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future,” Trump posted Thursday on his Truth Social network.

Asked to comment on a report by Axios claiming Russian and U.S. negotiators discussed a possible informal deal to observe the pact’s limits for at least six months, Peskov responded that any such extension could only be formal.

“Obviously its provisions can only be extended in a formal way,” Peskov said. “It’s hard to imagine any informal extension in this sphere.”

Moscow views the treaty’s expiration Thursday “negatively” and regrets it, Peskov said Thursday. At the same time, he emphasized that “if we receive constructive responses, we will certainly conduct a dialogue.”

Even as New START expired, the U.S. and Russia agreed Thursday to reestablish high-level, military-to-military dialogue following a meeting between senior officials from both sides in Abu Dhabi, the U.S. military command in Europe said.

The link was suspended in 2021 as relations between Moscow and Washington grew increasingly strained before Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

New START provisions

New START, signed in 2010 by then-President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, was the last remaining pact in a long series of agreements between Moscow and Washington to limit their nuclear arsenals, starting with SALT I in 1972.

New START restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers deployed and ready for use. It was originally set to expire in 2021 but was extended for five years.

The pact envisioned sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance, although they stopped in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed.

In February 2023, Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia couldn’t allow U.S. inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its NATO allies openly declared a goal of Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine. At the same time, the Kremlin emphasized it wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.

By offering in September to abide by New START’s limits for a year, which would buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement, Putin said the treaty’s expiration would be destabilizing and could fuel nuclear proliferation.

The U.S. wants a new deal involving China

Trump has indicated he would like to keep limits on nuclear weapons but wants to involve China in a potential new treaty.

In his first term, Trump tried and failed to push for a three-way nuclear pact involving China. Beijing has balked at any restrictions on its smaller but growing nuclear arsenal, while urging the U.S. to resume nuclear talks with Russia.

Thomas DiNanno, a top U.S. diplomat in charge of arms control said Friday that the expiration of the last nuclear arms pact between Russia and the United States marks the “end of an era” of what he described as “U.S. unilateral restraint” and insisted that Trump wants a “better agreement” that would also involve Beijing.

“As we sit here today, China’s entire nuclear arsenal has no limits, no transparency, no declarations and no controls,” DiNanno told the Conference on Disarmament, a U.N.-backed organization, in Geneva. He added that ”the next era of arms control can and should continue with clear focus, but it will require the participation of more than just Russia at the negotiating table.”

DiNanno, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, also accused Beijing of covertly conducting nuclear tests. “Today, I can reveal that the U.S. government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” he said.

DiNanno stated that China’s army “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions because it recognizes these tests violate test ban commitments.”

Ambassador Shen Jian of China accused the United States of “shifting the blame.”

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Keaten reported from Geneva.