PEACE campaigners warned today that the expiry of the last remaining nuclear weapons pact between Russia and the United States risks a new arms race.

This comes as the New Start treaty, which was signed in 2010 by US president Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, restricted each side to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads on no more than 700 missiles and bombers.

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, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended Moscow’s participation, saying Russia couldn’t allow US inspections of its nuclear sites at a time when Washington and its Nato allies have openly declared Moscow’s defeat in Ukraine as their goal.

At the same time, the Kremlin emphasised it wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, pledging to respect its caps on nuclear weapons.

Offering in September to abide by New Start’s limits for a year to buy time for both sides to negotiate a successor agreement, Mr Putin said the treaty’s expiry would be destabilising and could fuel nuclear proliferation.

But US President Donald Trump has been non-committal about extending the deal.

A White House source said on Monday that the US president will make a decision on nuclear arms control “on his own timeline.”

But Russia confirmed on Tuesday that the US still hasn’t responded to Mr Putin’s proposal to extend New Start for a year.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Tass news agency on Tuesday: “The initiative put forward by President Putin remains on the table.

“We have not yet received any response from the Americans regarding this proposal,” which leaves the world’s largest nuclear arsenals “without a fundamental document to limit their capabilities and ensure oversight.”

Peace campaigners have long voiced concern about the expiry of New Start, warning it could lead to a new Russia-US arms race.

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Sophie Bolt told the Morning Star: “At a time when the threat from nuclear weapons is the highest it has been since the cold war, we now face the prospect of a new nuclear arms race with no limits on the world’s largest nuclear arsenals.

“Start’s potential expiry was factored in the decision by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward to 85 seconds to midnight, yet another wake-up call that we are rapidly accelerating towards a human-made catastrophe.  

“It is absolutely vital that all pressure is brought to bear on the US to accept Russia’s proposal to voluntarily extend the treaty for another year.”

“It’s in every single country’s interest that this treaty be extended,” she said.

Communist Party general secretary Alex Gordon described the expiry of the treaty as “an alarming threat to world peace and security.”

He said: “As Britain’s political Establishment is convulsed by public revelations of its corruption and venality, the world’s nuclear-armed powers are sleepwalking humanity into oblivion.

“The British government must wake up and call on President Trump to accept Russian proposals for an immediate extension to the New Start Treaty.”

Islington North Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn said: “The end of the New Start Treaty is the beginning of a new arms race.”

He said: “It is more important than ever to support a global treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons.”

The Stop the War Coalition said that no treaty means “no constraints on US or Russia’s nuclear arsenals for the first time in more than half a century. The need to build a strong anti-war movement has never been greater.”

US-based peace campaigner Eugene Puryear said: “More than ever it’s crucial we continue to build a movement against war and militarism on a global scale to counteract the alarming trend towards nuclear apocalypse.”