Putin offers arms control to help rebuild US-Russia ties

Bloomberg News on Aug 14, 2025

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Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled his intention to start work on a new arms control treaty with the U.S. a day before a summit with Donald Trump that’s expected to focus on ending the fighting in Ukraine and restoring economic ties.

An agreement on the control of strategic offensive weapons can “create long-term conditions for peace between our countries and in Europe and in the world as a whole,” Putin said Thursday at a Kremlin meeting with senior officials, including his finance minister and central bank chief, ahead of his Friday talks with the U.S. leader in Alaska.

Putin tried to press Trump during his first presidential term to agree to an arms deal but had little success. While Russia has been open to resuming nuclear talks with the U.S. since last year, officials said in June that worsening relations with the U.S. had led to fading chances for a new pact to replace the last such treaty with the U.S., which expires early next year.

“Putin’s aim is to divorce the issue of the war from bilateral relations including strategic and economic ones,” said Alexander Kolyandr, a London-based senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and former strategist at Credit Suisse Group AG. “The topic of business, energy and financial sanctions seems to be equally if not more important for Putin.”

With the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine now in its fourth year, Russia this month said that it no longer considers itself bound by a moratorium on the deployment of ground-based intermediate and shorter range missiles. Putin said in December that he planned to deploy his country’s Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in Belarus in the second half of 2025.

The Russian leader suspended participation in the New START nuclear treaty in 2023, though Moscow pledged to continue complying with its terms until the accord’s expiration. Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu later said that negotiations on a new accord would have to cover issues including NATO expansion, the U.S. global missile-defense system, and the deployment of ground-based missiles.

Putin heads to Alaska accompanied by economic officials, as well as his defense and foreign ministers, after Trump signaled he was looking to downplay expectations for a full peace deal at the summit. The U.S. president has warned Moscow that he is ready to impose “very severe consequences” if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Still, Putin praised the U.S. for making “quite energetic and sincere efforts” to stop the fighting in Ukraine.

European allies have expressed concern that the U.S. president — who has said an eventual deal would include territorial exchanges — could unilaterally agree to peace terms proposed by Putin that would disadvantage Ukraine and undermine the continent’s security.

Moscow is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas region as well as Crimea, which Putin’s forces illegally annexed in 2014, as a condition to unlock a ceasefire and enter negotiations over a lasting settlement, Bloomberg previously reported.

Following a call with European leaders, Trump said he hoped to use the Friday summit with Putin to set up a “quick second meeting” with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday that the Anchorage meeting is the precursor for a second round of talks.

Trump and Putin will also discuss bilateral economic cooperation at the talks, Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin’s top foreign policy aide, said Thursday, according to Tass. Ushakov will accompany the president to Alaska, where the two leaders may hold a joint news conference.

Alongside foreign and defense ministers, it will also include Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s representative for international investment and economic cooperation — a lineup which suggests the parties may also discuss potential business ventures following the top-level talks.