By EUvsDisinfo
The Kremlin blames others for not extending The New START Treaty. But Moscow played a big role in undermining the Treaty long before its demise.
On 6 February 2026, The New START Treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty, expired. As that happened, the Kremlin both launched and continued FIMI campaigns that sought to minimise Moscow’s responsibility for the Treaty’s lapse, blame the expiration on outside actors, generate doomsday paranoia, and proclaim a new nuclear multipolarity featuring Russia as a great power.
Pro-Kremlin outlets raised the spectre of mutually assured destruction while portraying Russia as the responsible actor whose overture for a 1-year extension ‘wasn’t heard in Washington’. At the same time, some pro-Russian commentators seemed to approve the emergence of a multilateral nuclear world dominated by the US, China, and Russia.
It is true that the US administration was not keen to extend the Treaty, arguing for a new approach that includes China. But it is also true that the Kremlin has been digging the Treaty’s grave for years.
The slow unravelling of New START
A bit of background. After entering into force on 5 February 2011, the Treaty between the US and Russia limited the number of strategic nuclear weapons each side could deploy, put caps on the numbers of other strategic weapons such as heavy bombers, and also put in place monitoring systems that included on-site inspections of nuclear facilities.
During the Covid pandemic, the US and Russia paused mutual inspections of their nuclear weapons sites for health reasons. In August 2022, Moscow suspended the resumption of these inspections, a key monitoring mechanism of the Treaty. At the time, the Kremlin blamed Western sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia’s illegal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Then, in February 2023, the Kremlin suspended its participation in the Treaty, although without withdrawing from it completely.
The Kremlin’s nuclear sabre rattling
While the Kremlin was steadily dismantling its participation in the New START, it was continuing a long-running FIMI campaign portraying the West as dead set on provoking a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
Among many examples, pro-Russian outlets have accused Western countries of encouraging Ukraine to carry out acts of nuclear terrorism against Russia, asserted that the West is helping Ukraine to build a dirty bomb to use against Russia, and claimed that Western tanks given to Ukraine could deliver nuclear warheads.
In addition, outlets and commentators accused Western countries of aiding Ukraine in potentially attacking Russian nuclear power plants, scheming to frame Russia for nuclear attacks or disasters, and giving Ukraine ‘radioactive substances’ the country could use against Russia.
Pro-Kremlin outlets have also spread blame more widely, claiming that NATO destroyed trust in New START.
Biolabs, dirty bombs, and imagined threats
That’s just the beginning. Since at least its first invasion and annexation of parts of Ukraine in 2014, Russian state and pro-Kremlin outlets have maintained a steady drumbeat of claims showcasing supposed ways that Western countries are plotting to use weapons of mass destruction against the country.
A massive FIMI campaign has long falsely asserted that the US has used biolaboratories across the world to experiment with biological and chemical weapons. After Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this campaign went into overdrive, asserting, among many things, that US labs were developing biological weapons near Russian borders, trying somehow to reduce Russia’s gene pool, and turning Ukrainian soldiers into ‘cruel monsters’.
Finally, while the Kremlin has accused the West of planning nuclear conflicts, its FIMI campaigns have intended to normalise the celebration of Russian nuclear prowess.
In particular, pro-Russian commentators have often showcased the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile’s supposed speed, destructive power, and ability to intimidate. Disinformation has alleged, for example, that the missile’s impact caused an earthquake in Ukraine, that one such strike deprived Moldova of half its gas reserves, and that the Oreshnik’s deployment in Belarus is a death sentence for Poland. Russian outlets showcased the recent Belarus deployment with a video released on 30 December. The video showed Russian soldiers driving the missile systems through Belarusian forests and setting them up. Given the Oreshnik’s range, the Kremlin’s move might have been intended to threaten not just Poland but other European countries as well.
The delayed roll-out of the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile has received similar treatment, with pro-Russian commentators producing a music video glorifying its power. Predictably, the video does not include highlights of possible test launch failures.
From transparency to opacity
FIMI around the New START and the intent to normalise the nuclear threat language are mutually reinforcing. Together, they form a strategic communication architecture that deflects responsibility for the collapse of arms control, legitimises Russia’s doctrinal shift towards lower nuclear thresholds, and conditions foreign audiences to see nuclear intimidation as routine.
In short, the end of New START is not just a legal or diplomatic milestone, but a turning point in Russia’s information strategy. The pro-Kremlin FIMI ecosystem is transiting away from arms control transparency to information driven opacity by shaping global perceptions of nuclear risk on Moscow’s terms. Regarding New Start, the outcome of this shift was to make Russia’s gradual degradation of the Treaty seem a blameless and inevitable response to supposed Western provocations.
By EUvsDisinfo
