The last meeting happened in October 2021. That was before Russia sent tanks into Ukraine. Before the sanctions. Before the U.S. started calling what was happening in Bucha a war crime. The Bilateral Consultative Commission, the body that keeps the New START treaty running, has not met since. Moscow has rejected three proposed dates for new talks. The treaty is now in jeopardy.
The Biden administration told Congress on Tuesday. A six-page compliance report landed on Capitol Hill. It says Russia has barred U.S. inspection teams from entering its missile and bomber bases since last August. Without those visits, Washington cannot count Russia’s deployed strategic warheads. The treaty ceiling is 1,550. The U.S. cannot verify that number holds.
This did not happen overnight. Both sides paused inspections in March 2020. Covid-19 was the reason. Russia reopened its facilities in May 2022. They let in exactly one NATO team. Then the first U.S. sanctions packages for Ukraine hit. Russia reversed course. “We kept our side of the hangar open,” a senior State Department official told reporters. “They slammed the door anyway.”
Moscow tells a different story. Russian diplomats argue that Western travel restrictions block their inspectors from reaching U.S. bases. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova repeated that claim on February 2. She said Russian experts “cannot receive visas or move freely on American territory.” The State Department counters that no Russian request to inspect has been filed since August. Standard diplomatic visas remain available.
The treaty itself is the last major nuclear arms control agreement between the two countries. It was signed in 2011. It limits deployed strategic warheads to 1,550 per side. It also limits launchers and heavy bombers. Both sides agreed to on-site inspections to verify compliance. That verification is now broken.
For a year after the war started, there was guarded optimism. Arms-control cooperation might survive the conflict, some thought. That optimism is gone. The compliance report is terse. It says Russia’s refusal “threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons control.”
The stakes are concrete. Without inspections, the U.S. cannot confirm that Russia is not cheating. Not that Russia is cheating. Just that the U.S. cannot confirm the opposite. That is a dangerous gap. Nuclear arms control rests on trust and verification. One is gone. The other may follow.
The war in Ukraine is the immediate cause. But the breakdown has deeper roots. The treaty was extended in 2021 for five years. That was the last major arms-control achievement between the two sides. Since then, relations have deteriorated. Russia withdrew from the European conventional forces treaty. The U.S. pulled out of the Open Skies Treaty. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty collapsed in 2019. New START is now the last one standing.
Russia’s blockade of inspections started in August 2022. That was six months into the war. The U.S. had already imposed sanctions. The inspections freeze was a direct response. Moscow linked the two issues. Washington says they are separate. The treaty does not mention sanctions. It mentions inspections.
The State Department report is now in Congress. Lawmakers will have to decide what to do. The treaty does not expire until 2026. But a treaty that cannot be verified is a treaty that is not working. The administration has kept the door open. Russia has not walked through.
