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Commentary | 13 January 2025

In Russia’s perceived war with the West, arms control is collateral damage

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches its third anniversary, relations between Moscow and the West have continued to deteriorate. Following the White House’s approval in November of Ukrainian strikes inside Russia with U.S-supplied ATACMs, the Kremlin once again escalated its nuclear threats, formally updating Russian doctrine to lower the threshold for nuclear use in response to a subjectively determined threat to sovereignty and territorial integrity. This latest threat fits into a pattern of more aggressive nuclear posturing from Moscow following the full-scale invasion—including a systematic dismantling of the arms control regime.

The most glaring example is New START—the last remaining treaty between Russia and the United States that sets restrictions on nuclear weapons. Though the March 2021 agreement to extend the treaty was a notable achievement, things quickly took a turn for the worse after the February 2022 full-scale invasion. After first refusing to submit to on-site inspections in the summer of 2022, Moscow later cancelled its participation in the New START Bilateral Consultative Commission meeting that November. The most decisive step came the following February, when Moscow officially suspended its participation in the treaty. Russia has since signalled its disinterest in negotiating a successor to New START following its expiration in 2026, having rejected a U.S. proposal at the start of this year for bilateral conversations on a new treaty without conditions. Moscow’s destruction of the arms control regime also extends to the conventional domain, having formally withdrawn from the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in November 2023.

This latest threat fits into a pattern of more aggressive nuclear posturing from Moscow following the full-scale invasion—including a systematic dismantling of the arms control regime. Nicholas Lokker

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov justified rejection of the U.S. offer to resume a strategic arms control dialogue by arguing that “the United States has cast aside the principles on which our countries once agreed to establish cooperation, including on arms control”. This statement reveals the fundamental driver of Russia’s recent approach to arms control—namely, the intention to subsume it within its larger conflict with the West. Russia seemingly perceives previously established arms control agreements as elements of the broader Western-dominated political and security order that it aims to overturn. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov made this linkage explicit when he stated in January 2023 that the condition for Russia’s return to New START compliance would be U.S. acceptance of Russian demands for security guarantees made in late 2021.

Russia’s refusal to compartmentalise arms control also stems from an assessment of its coercive value vis-à-vis the West. Assuming—not without reason—a lower risk tolerance in the West than in Russia, the Kremlin has sought to instil fear with the goal of compelling Washington and its European allies to limit support for Kyiv. By linking arms control talks with the conflict in Ukraine, Moscow has signalled to Western governments that the breakdown of these talks is the price for their involvement in the war. For Russia, then, arms control represents a key tool at its disposal to attempt to enhance its position vis-à-vis Ukraine.

Russia seemingly perceives previously established arms control agreements as elements of the broader Western-dominated political and security order that it aims to overturn. Nicholas Lokker

Admittedly, Russia has not abandoned all aspects of arms control. Despite its suspended participation in New START, the latest U.S. annual assessment concluded that Moscow likely continues to abide by the treaty’s numerical limits—though the lack of inspections makes this increasingly difficult to verify. This continued observance of New START’s central provisions suggests that Moscow may see remaining utility in limiting strategic nuclear capabilities, an interest that could grow should concerns in Russia rise about the costs of unconstrained nuclear competition with the United States. In a February 2024 speech, Putin warned of “Western attempts to draw [Russia] into an arms race, thereby exhausting us, mirroring the strategy they successfully employed with the Soviet Union in the 1980s”. Moscow has also maintained its interest in new agreements that would limit NATO’s deployment of U.S. intermediate-range missiles (whether armed conventionally or with nuclear warheads) on European soil, including a proposal that Vladimir Putin himself made in 2019—although this only came after Russia sought additional leverage by deploying its own intermediate-range missile in violation of the INF treaty. Finally, Russia has continued to engage in risk reduction efforts by notifying the United States of its strategic exercises and ballistic missile launches—including ahead of the notable use of an intermediate-range ballistic missile against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in late November 2024.

Moreover, while Russian disinterest in arms control seems to be increasingly entrenched, certain developments could change this in the future. Economic factors, such as a lack of resources stemming from sanctions and exhaustion from its war against Ukraine, could lead Russia to refrain from ambitious modernisation or numerical expansion of its arsenal and, therefore, incentivise it to seek limitations. More forceful interventions by Russia’s international partners—most notably China, but also India—could also convince Moscow that greater engagement on arms control is necessary to keep its most important relationships intact. Finally, in the longer term, a successor to Putin could seek to return to the table, playing the arms control card to rehabilitate Russia’s image within the international community. NATO’s latest Strategic Concept, published in 2022, explicitly recognises the potential role of arms control in enhancing deterrence and defence, and the alliance should not abandon hopes of using arms control as a tool to increase its security down the line.

Nevertheless, the United States and its NATO allies must, for the foreseeable future, be prepared for the absence of arms control with Russia, including the various dangers associated with that absence. This may mean pursuing more modest efforts to reduce risk and increase predictability in the interim, including transparency and verification measures that do not require active cooperation from Moscow. And while the West should remain open to a renewed willingness to engage in arms control by Russia, it should not seek a new agreement at any price. There is a particular risk that this could occur after Donald Trump returns to the White House next January, given his apparent sympathy for key Russian demands to renegotiate the European security architecture, including a potential freeze on discussions surrounding Ukrainian accession to NATO membership. Yet Russia’s linkage of arms control with these issues does not mean the West should respond in kind—and Trump would do well to remember that no deal is often better than a bad deal.

The European Leadership Network itself as an institution holds no formal policy positions. The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors rather than the European Leadership Network or its members. The ELN aims to encourage debates that will help develop Europe’s capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security policy challenges of our time, to further its charitable purposes.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons / Chuck Kennedy