ONLY THE NUCLEAR BOMB PREVENTS GLOBAL WAR, KREMLIN WARNS

​MOSCOW — The global security apparatus has successfully unraveled, leaving atomic weapons as the sole remaining barrier preventing humanity from collapsing into total war, the Kremlin warned today.

​Speaking at the Primakov Readings foreign policy forum in Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov sounded a grim alarm over an eroding global security architecture. He argued that the world’s reliance on atomic arsenals is no longer a choice, but an absolute necessity.

​”In fact, apart from nuclear deterrence, there is nothing left in this world,” Peskov declared. “It’s the only thing that protects the world from a global war.”

​The Post-Treaty Void

​This stark declaration arrives amid heightened anxieties surrounding a multi-country arms race. The guardrails built over decades of Cold War diplomacy are officially gone. In February 2026, New START—the final remaining nuclear arms control pact between Russia and the United States—expired without a replacement.

​Signed in 2010, the landmark treaty capped the deployed strategic nuclear arsenals of both superpowers at 1,550 warheads each. Before the agreement lapsed, both Washington and Moscow routinely traded accusations of non-compliance, with Russia formally suspending its participation in 2023 following its invasion of Ukraine.

​While Russian President Vladimir Putin floated a last-minute proposal in late 2025 to informally honor the treaty limits for an additional year, U.S. President Donald Trump bypassed the offer, stating the U.S. would instead pursue a “new, improved, and modernized treaty.” Today, for the first time in nearly forty years, the world’s two premier nuclear powers operate with zero legally binding limits on their strategic forces.

​The Trilateral Standoff

​Efforts to forge a successor agreement remain completely gridlocked by modern geopolitical realities. President Trump has firmly insisted that any future deal must include China, pointing to Beijing’s rapidly expanding atomic arsenal. China has publicly and repeatedly rejected this pressure, refusing to bind itself to limitations while its stockpile remains significantly smaller than those of the U.S. and Russia.

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​Moscow, meanwhile, has introduced its own diplomatic roadblocks. The Kremlin maintains that if China is dragged into the framework, Washington’s European nuclear allies—Britain and France—must also submit their arsenals to the treaty’s restrictions.

​The Rise of Lethal Tech

​Adding to the volatility, the Kremlin highlighted that the definition of mass destruction is fundamentally changing. Peskov noted that rapid scientific advancements are paving the way for a dangerous new tier of conventional weaponry.

​”As technology is developing, it is already clear that new types of non-nuclear weapons will emerge,” Peskov remarked. “But they may eventually match nuclear weapons in destructive power.”

​Throughout the now four-year-old war in Ukraine, President Putin has repeatedly leveraged nuclear rhetoric, drawing fierce condemnation from Western leaders who accuse Moscow of reckless saber-rattling. Yet, with high-level military talks between Washington and Moscow yielding no tangible progress toward a replacement framework, the world enters uncharted, unconstrained territory—where peace is held hostage entirely by the promise of mutually assured destruction.