Russia says “Goodbye, Treaty!”
As Vladimir Putin announced during his speech, Russia is suspending its participation in the strategic offensive arms treaty, also known as START Treaty. The last START Treaty was signed in 2010, in Prague. It became effective the following year, and it was extended two years for five more years, right after United States President Joe Biden took office.
The treaty caps the complete number of strategic nuclear warheads that the U.S. and Russia could deploy, but also the deployment of land and submarine-based missiles and bombers that could be delivered by each of them.
For now, Russia has the biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the whole world, with 6,000 warheads, as the experts confirmed. Together, it seems that the two world powers have no less than 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads, which is enough to destroy the whole planet over and over again. But let’s go back to Putin. Now that Russia has officially stepped away from such an important treaty that was meant to keep things together, what will the (nuclear) future bring? Let’s find out!
