President Donald Trump said he called on President Putin to stop firing on Ukraine during extremely cold weather, and the Russian leader agreed. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
China aims to have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030, but even that figure pales in comparison to the aging giants of the Cold War. As of early 2026, the global nuclear hierarchy remains top-heavy, with the U.S. and Russia holding roughly 86% of the world’s total inventory. Both the U.S. and Russia hold around 4,000 total warheads, with close to 1,700 deployed by each. Global nuclear stockpiles declined to about 12,000 in 2025, down from more than 70,000 in 1986.
In February 2023, Russia announced it was suspending its participation in the New START treaty, halting inspections and data-sharing under the pact while saying it would continue to respect the numerical limits. But, more recently, it floated the idea of extending the treaty by another year.
TRUMP STUNS WITH CALL TO RESUME NUCLEAR TESTS — WHY NOW, AND WHAT IT COULD MEAN
Korda said that proposal reflected shared constraints rather than a sudden change in Russian intentions.
"It’s not in Russia’s interest to dramatically accelerate an arms race while its current modernization programs are going so poorly and while its industrial capacity is tied up in Ukraine," he said.
Korda said that without inspections and data exchanges, countries are forced to rely on their own intelligence, increasing uncertainty and encouraging worst-case planning.
"Without those onsite inspections, without data exchanges, without anything like that, all countries are really left with national technical means of being able to monitor each other’s nuclear forces," Korda said.
With New START’s limits gone, experts said the immediate concern is not the construction of new nuclear weapons but how quickly existing warheads could be deployed. Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russia could move faster than the United States in the near term by "uploading" additional warheads onto missiles already in service.
"Uploading would be a process of adding additional warheads to our ICBMs and submarine-launched missiles," Panda said. "The Russians could be much faster than the United States."
The New START Treaty, which limits the U.S. and Russia's nuclear warheads, expires Thursday. (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)
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As a result, Grajewski said she is less concerned about a rapid buildup of those treaty-covered forces than about Moscow’s continued investment in nuclear systems that fall outside traditional arms control frameworks.
"What is more concerning is Russia’s advances in asymmetric domains," she said, pointing to systems such as the Poseidon nuclear-powered torpedo and nuclear-powered cruise missiles, which are not covered by existing treaties.
President Donald Trump has previously said he wants to pursue arms control with both Russia and China before suggesting the U.S. should resume nuclear testing.
"If there’s ever a time when we need nuclear weapons like the kind of weapons that we’re building and that Russia has — and that China has, to a lesser extent, but will have — that’s going to be a very sad day," Trump said in February 2025. "That’s going to be probably oblivion."
But, in October, he declared, "Because of other countries' testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately."
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