New Delhi: The United States president, Donald Trump, said Washington was discussing nuclear disarmament with Russia and China, raising the possibility of negotiations on the world’s largest nuclear arsenals after a major US-Russia treaty expired. His claim in a Thursday Newsmax interview faced immediate resistance from Beijing, which again rejected three-way talks.
“I’d love to denuclearize if possible,” Trump said, adding that Washington was talking to Moscow and Beijing. Newsmax said he had raised the issue with Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
Trump predicted China could “catch up” with the US within five years but offered no supporting assessment. Neither Beijing nor Moscow has confirmed formal trilateral negotiations.
China rejects trilateral nuclear negotiations
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, said on Friday that Washington bore primary responsibility for nuclear disarmament because of its much larger arsenal.
Describing China’s stockpile as incomparable with American and Russian holdings, she said trilateral talks were “neither fair, reasonable nor realistic” at present. Beijing did not confirm the bilateral discussions Trump described.
Moscow has similarly questioned a three-country format. On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said nuclear weapons were unlikely to feature in any prospective summit involving Trump, Xi and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
He had earlier called for renewed US-Russia negotiations requiring detailed expert work.
New START expiry leaves nuclear arms-control gap
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), signed in 2010 and effective from February 2011, expired on February 5, 2026, after a five-year extension.
It capped each country’s treaty accountable, deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 and deployed strategic delivery systems at 700. Russia suspended implementation in 2023, disrupting verification measures before the treaty expired.
January 2026 estimates from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) put Russia’s total nuclear inventory at 5,420 warheads, the United States’ at 5,042 and China’s at 620.
Of these, an estimated 1,796, 1,770 and 34 warheads, respectively, were deployed. The US and Russian inventory figures include retired weapons awaiting dismantlement and should not be confused with New START’s narrower accounting rules.
As RNA Media reported earlier, Sipri has warned of rising nuclear risks as countries modernize their arsenals. Its director, Karim Haggag, identified the breakdown of arms control agreements as a source of growing danger.
Arms control places negotiated restrictions on weapons and deployment, while disarmament seeks their reduction or elimination. Any successor arrangement would require agreed limits, credible verification and transparency, none of which Trump specified.