Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Russia has lost a significant figure on the international stage.
The dissolution, in 1991, of what US President Ronald Reagan once called an “evil empire” left the Kremlin with less territory, less financial muscle and less influence across the globe.
But Russia maintained its influence in one important area.
Its continued status as a nuclear superpower, on a level more or less equal to the United States, guaranteed even a weakened Moscow a place at the high table of international diplomacy.
At nuclear summits, the Kremlin leader can sit majestically opposite the president in the White House – just as in the glory days of the Cold War – to decide on international security issues.
In 2010, then-US President Barack Obama and his short-term Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev did just that, agreeing to New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which was described at the time by the White House as "historic."
The New START treaty limits both countries to a maximum of 1,550 long-range nuclear warheads deployed on delivery systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and bombers.
But those days, like the New START treaty itself, which expires on Thursday, now appear to be over.
The breakdown of the recent arms control agreement between the US and Russia – which Washington repeatedly accused Moscow of violating by denying inspections of Russian nuclear facilities – has been ignored by the Trump administration, with the US president himself dismissing the dire prospect of a world without nuclear restrictions.
"If it expires, it expires," Trump joked in January, while suggesting that a "better" deal could eventually be reached.
This apparent lack of urgency from Washington stands in stark contrast to the anxiety in Moscow, where there has been much complaining and gnashing of teeth over the issue of arms reduction.
Speaking to reporters in Moscow as the New START treaty neared its expiration, Medvedev — no longer president but a security official outspoken on the limits of power — warned of the dangers of allowing the agreement to expire. He suggested that doing so would accelerate the “Doomsday Clock,” a symbolic representation of how close humanity is to the destruction of the world.
"I don't want to say that this will immediately mean a catastrophe and a nuclear war will begin, but it should still alarm everyone," Medvedev added.
The Kremlin certainly seems alarmed.
Its proposal to extend the terms of New START, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, has so far been met with silence from the American side, threatening to trigger a new era of uncertainty.
"For the first time, the United States and Russia, the two countries that possess the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, will be left without a fundamental document that would limit and establish control over these arsenals," Peskov told reporters in a recent conference call focused on the nuclear issue.
"We believe this is very bad for global and strategic security," he added, focusing on fears that are likely shared across much of the world.
But the Kremlin's expressions of concern may be more selfish and strategic than they are willing to admit.
In addition to being deprived of a platform for arms reduction that displays one of the last vestiges of Soviet-era power, Moscow now faces a future of potentially unlimited U.S. nuclear expansion.
The Trump administration, for example, has already revived the idea of “Trump-class” warships armed with nuclear weapons, a Cold War-era policy that was abandoned decades ago.
The old Soviet Union could have matched it. But with an economy and a defense budget that are a fraction of Washington's, Moscow has virtually no hope of matching it—exacerbating the already wide gap in power and influence between the old rivals.
Of course, the US has its own reasons for allowing nuclear arms control with Russia to expire, not least its desire to include China, an emerging nuclear power, in future agreements.
But the expiration of New START marks the end of an era, not only of "superpower" arms control treaties that focused exclusively on Moscow and Washington, but also of an era in which the US was willing to accept nuclear limitations, CNN reports.
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