Name: Why Russia and US seem willing to coordinate again on military dialogue | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T17:16:25.000Z
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The New START nuclear arms treaty between Russia and the US has expired, technically leaving both countries free to develop nuclear weapons without limits.

The United States has refused an offer by Russia's Vladimir Putin to extend warhead limits and says that any new deal would have to include China.

Beijing has rejected calls to enter the talks.

At this moment, experts warn China's nuclear arsenal has been growing faster than any other country's.

New Start was signed in 2010 by then US President Barack Obama and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Russia and the US control more than 80% of the world's nuclear warheads.

But the absence of any treaty is prompting fears of a new arms race.

Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Vadeful has expressed concern and urged China to get involved.

DW's Chief International Editor Richard Walker is currently traveling with the minister and joins us from Brunei.

Richard, what's Vadaful's main message to China on this issue?

So I put a question to the Foreign Minister at a press conference that took place in Canberra in Australia earlier today, asking him what he saw as the implications of this arms control treaty running out and particularly the implications with a view to China, which as you mentioned is rapidly expanding its own nuclear forces even though it still remains well behind Russia and the US And I think it was quite an unusually stark message from va de pool really saying to the Chinese, you always say that you're committed to multilateralism.

Well prove it by engaging in arms control talks with the Russians and the Americans.

Now the Chinese have always said essentially we have so few and the estimate is currently around 600 nuclear warheads.

While the Russians and the Americans under new start they had 1550 deployed nuclear warheads each, although they're actually had a few thousand more in kind of long term storage.

The Chinese position had always been, well we're so far behind you guys, why should we even talk to you about arms control?

What are at this point the prospects for a new nuclear deal?

Yeah, well, I mean this is extremely uncertain.

So if we look at the US and Russia first of all, so they're level pegging on this level of 1,550 each.

The Americans obviously want the Chinese to get involved, but

if the Chinese keep saying, well we don't want to get involved, then there's a very strong motivation for the Americans to do what's called up loading.

So to take more of those warheads than it has out of storage and actually put them onto missiles and other what are called delivery systems.

Now that if that does take place, then that is the kind of move that there are worries out there that that could cause an armed arms race.

With the Russians then following suit and with the Chinese then thinking, well, you guys have so many more nuclear weapons, we're going to ramp up our expansion still further.

And you get into what's called in the lingo an action reaction cycle, with each side thinking we have to react to what the other side is doing.

And because there are three players here, it would be that much more difficult to come up with a stable solution, essentially.

One reason being that the United States thinks, well, we have to have nuclear weapons to target, not just Russia's nuclear weapons, but

So the United States will always have this feeling that it has to have more nuclear weapons than either Russia or China put together.

And the Russians and the Chinese very unlikely to accept that.

So this is what's driving this sense that there's a very, very significant risk that we're going to enter into an arms race dynamic between these three powers that would be much harder to limit with classic forms of arms control than the last arms race that took place in the last century.

That was GW's chief international editor, Richard Walker.

Ukraine and Russia have ended a round of peace talks in Abu Dhabi with both sides welcoming the negotiations as productive.

US Mediator Steve Witkoff says the warring parties have each agreed to exchange more than 300 prisoners, but

In the run up to the talks, Russia launched fresh attacks on Ukraine, on civilians and vital national infrastructure.

Russia keeps hitting Ukrainian cities even as talks continue.

Overnight, Russian drones slammed into several districts in Kyiv.

At least two elderly women were injured and multiple apartment blocks left shattered.

I heard the glass smash and the door slammed in Abu Dhabi.

A Ukrainian diplomat called the talks with US Mediation productive.

A Moscow envoy said progress has been made in the negotiations over ending the country's war in Ukraine.

And President Zelensky announced negotiation teams have agreed on another prisoner swap.

We expect the POW exchange in the near future.

The main deadlock in the talks appears to be the future of eastern Ukraine.

Moscow insists Kyiv pullback from parts of the Donbas region, a non starter for Zelensky.

Meanwhile, Russia keeps hammering energy infrastructure in sub zero temperatures, leaving millions to battle the cold and at the same time, concern over where the next attack will hit.

Let's bring in our Riga bureau chief Yuri Rashido, DW has been reporting on Russia from Riga since we were banned from reporting from Moscow.

Talks in Abu Dhabi have been described as productive by both Kyiv and Moscow.

Well, this rounds of talks they call at least produced one concrete positive result.

We have heard that both sides exchanged hundreds of prisoners of war, 157from each side.

That's a big deal, especially since the last exchange was months ago.

Apart from that, not much is clear which is nothing new.

The toughest issue still seems to be the question of territory.

Should Russia get to the entire Donbass or only the part is it already controls.

Putin's special economic envoy Dmitriev, who also took part in the negotiations.

What's interesting is that he praised the Russian American economic talks and indirectly linked them to the Ukraine peace process.

Similar to President Trump who keeps talking about economic deals in exchange for security guarantees for Ukraine.

It seems though, Yuri, like not only Ukraine and Russia were negotiating there in Abu Dhabi.

The US has announced Washington and Moscow will re establish high level military to military dialogue.

That channel collapsed over four years ago.

Why do the two sides seem to want to coordinate again on that level now?

This channel, Nicole, is pretty important.

and Russia coordinate on things like fighting international terrorism and to warn each other about major crisis and yeah, major crisis.

Speaking about major crisis obviously includes the risk of nuclear war.

The last treaty between the US and Russia on nuclear arms controls expired today.

From now on, the world's two biggest nuclear powers aren't bound by any agreement that limits their arsenals or requires inspections.

So in that sense, it's good if both countries want to cooperate militarily again.

But for Ukraine, it's not great great news.

If Washington and Moscow are moving closer together, it means the US is stepping back from Ukraine.

And just hours before the Abu Dhabi talks began, Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping held a highly publicized video call.

Well, the official reason for that call was Chinese New Year greetings from Putin to Xi.

But it's pretty clear that there was more behind it.

She called Putin a dear old friend and openly back to Russia.

Which only fuels speculation that China might play a role in the future peace talks.

She also pointed out that Putin's close ally, Former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had just been in Beijing to align positions on major geopolitical issues.

He said China has long hinted it's willing to mediate in the Russia Ukraine war and even released its own peace plan early on, though Kiev dismissed it.

Too pro Russian as too pro Russian, we don't know what she and Putin actually agreed on.

But Shoigu's visa suggests Moscow may be sounding out some kind of Chinese involvement, though for now, that's still just speculation.