February 6th, 2026 | Weekly Issue
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Moscow: US and Russia 'No Longer Bound' by New START Limits as Treaty Set to Expire
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The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it believes the US and Russia are no longer bound by New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the two powers, which is set to expire on Thursday.
"In the current circumstances, we assume that the Parties to the New START are no longer bound by any obligations or symmetrical declarations in the context of the Treaty, including its core provisions, and are in principle free to choose their next steps," the ministry said in a statement issued on Telegram on Wednesday, the day before the treaty officially expires.
The New START treaty caps the number of nuclear warheads each side can deploy at 1,550 and limits the number of deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers to 800. The Russian ministry's statement noted that President Vladimir Putin had offered a mutual agreement to maintain those limits for another year to make room for diplomacy to negotiate a new treaty, but the Trump administration hasn't responded to the proposal.
"However, no formal official response from the United States with regard to the Russian initiative has been received through bilateral channels... It means that our ideas have been deliberately left unanswered," the ministry said.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who signed the New START with then-US President Barack Obama in 2010, mentioned the end of the treaty on X. "That's it. For the first time since 1972, Russia (the former USSR) and the US have no treaty limiting strategic nuclear forces. SALT 1, SALT 2, START I, START II, SORT, New START - all in the past," he said in a post that included a meme that said "winter is coming."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about the treaty's expiration on Wednesday and said that any arms control must include China, but Beijing has maintained it won't enter into a trilateral deal unless Washington and Moscow reduce their nuclear stockpile, since China has significantly fewer nuclear weapons.
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Trump's Board of Peace Is a Dystopia in Motion
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While the sheer pomposity, Trumpian megalomania, and painfully paradoxical context surrounding the so-called "Board of Peace" (BoP) might tempt some to dismiss it as mere spectacle or farce, its criminal, inhumane, and hegemonic nature makes it far too dangerous to ignore.
Last week, Trump and his new, thuggish boys' club of heads of state publicly celebrated the launch of the Board at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Its hypocrisy was inadvertently underscored by Elon Musk - Trump's on-again, off-again ally - when he quipped onstage that one might call it the Board of "p-i-e-c-e," a venture devoted to claiming "a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela," to which his interviewer, Larry Fink, billionaire CEO of BlackRock, responded with cheer: "We got one." Only a room filled with the world's tech and business elite could find this funny.
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US Treasury Secretary Says US Sanctions Crushed Iran's Economy and Sparked Protests
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US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday that the Trump administration's "maximum pressure campaign" against Iran was responsible for collapsing the country's economy and sparking the protests and unrest that began at the end of December.
"At the Treasury, what we have done is created a dollar shortage in the country ... It came to a swift and, I would say, grand culmination in December, when one of the largest banks in Iran went under. There was a run on the bank," Bessent said.
"The central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded, and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street," he added.
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Trump Again Bypasses Congress To Advance Major Weapons Package for Israel
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Dave DeCamp | February 1st
The State Department approved a $6.5 billion billion weapons package that includes Apache helicopters and military vehicles
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The Trump administration has approved $6.5 billion in new weapons deals for Israel that include Apache attack helicopters and military vehicles, a step Secretary of State Marco Rubio took without waiting for the normal congressional review process.
According to The New York Times, the approval of the arms deals marks the third time that the Trump administration bypassed Congress to send weapons to Israel.
The arms packages had been under review by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the State Department is supposed to wait until the top two members of each committee approve the deals before advancing them, but Rubio didn't, drawing a rebuke from Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), the ranking member of the House committee.
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US AFRICOM Commander Confirms Deployment of 'Small Team' of Troops to Nigeria
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Dave DeCamp | February 3rd
The confirmation of the deployment comes after President Trump launched missile strikes in the country on Christmas Day
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The head of US Africa Command said on Tuesday that the US has deployed a "small team" of troops to Nigeria, comments that come more than a month after the US launched its first missile strikes in the country on Christmas Day.
It's unclear when the US troops were sent to Nigeria, but AFRICOM Commander Dagvin Anderson said that it came after he and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu held talks in Rome during the Aqaba Process summit in October 2025, before President Trump threatened to go into Nigeria "guns-a-blazing" if the Nigerian government didn't do more to protect Christians.
"We were able to share some thoughts and agree that we needed to work together on a way forward in the region," Anderson told reporters during a digital press briefing. "That has led to increased collaboration between our nations, to include a small US team that brings some unique capabilities from the United States in order to augment what Nigeria has been doing for several years."
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State Department Approves $12 Billion in Arms Sales for Saudi Arabia in Less Than a Week
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Dave DeCamp | February 3rd
The deals include a $9 billion Patriot missile sale and an F-15 sustainment sale worth $3 billion
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The State Department on Tuesday approved a potential $3 billion F-15 fighter jet sustainment deal for Saudi Arabia, as the Trump administration is fulfilling its pledge to sell Riyadh a large number of weapons.
The latest deal came less than a week after the State Department moved forward with another major potential deal for Patriot air defense missiles worth $9 billion.
The $12 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia came a few months after Saudi Crown Prince Mohhamed bin Salman visited President Trump at the White House, where they signed a new military agreement, dubbed the US-Saudi Strategic Defense Agreement (SDA), and the US designated Riyadh a "major non-NATO ally."
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