Moscow, Sept. 23 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin offered the United States a narrowly tailored nuclear pause that would keep the world's two largest arsenals within the New START treaty limits for one year after the pact expires on February 5, 2026, if Washington reciprocates. The proposal, unveiled at a Kremlin Security Council session, is engineered less as a breakthrough than as a stabilizer, a way to hold deployed forces at existing ceilings while diplomacy gropes for a way forward. The Kremlin leader framed the move as a test of American intentions and as a hedge against a sudden slide into an unconstrained arms race that would unnerve markets, rattle alliances, and reward maximalists on both sides.

Putin's wording left little s...