Trump: US holding denuclearisation talks with Russia and China — SkimNews
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- Trump said on Oct 15 that the US is holding talks with Moscow and Beijing aimed at denuclearisation, telling Newsmax it is "a shame" the world still has nuclear weapons
- Russia holds the most stored nuclear warheads, followed by the US and China, per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute; the US outpaces Russia in the number of deployed warheads
- Trump expects China to "catch up" with the US nuclear arsenal within five years, framing any three-party deal as urgent
- Newsmax reported that Trump has spoken directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping about denuclearisation
- The New START treaty, signed in 2010 and extended once by Biden and Putin for five years, expired earlier in 2025; any further extension would require a new executive decision to voluntarily extend the limits
- Trump cast the effort as personal, saying: "I'd love to denuclearise if possible" — but stopped short of announcing a concrete framework or timeline
Why it matters: New START's sole five-year extension was already burned — the treaty expired earlier in 2025, leaving no bilateral cap on US and Russian deployed strategic warheads. Trump's revived talks are an attempt to reimpose limits without the treaty architecture. His own five-year timeline for China reaching US nuclear parity raises the pressure on any three-party framework.
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