Back to Great Power Rivalry and Nuclear Risk as Russia Quits US Plutonium Pact.

Russia’s State Duma on Oct. 8, 2025 approved withdrawing from the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, which required the U.S. and Russia to each dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium. The move deepens the unraveling of U.S.-Russia arms control as New START’s limits on deployed warheads and delivery systems face expiration in early 2026.

According to Reuters on 8 October 2025, the Duma approved Russia’s withdrawal from the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, signed in 2000 and in force since 2011, which required Washington and Moscow to dispose of 34 metric tons each of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for thousands of Cold War-era warheads. The decision, taken in Moscow by the lower house of parliament, ends a key pillar of managing military-plutonium stockpiles, with the Kremlin citing the deterioration of the arms-control framework with the United States. This break comes as New START approaches its early-2026 expiry, a treaty that caps forces at 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 deployed strategic delivery systems, and as Moscow “suspended” inspections in 2023 while stating it would observe the ceilings. In September 2025, the Kremlin also pledged to remain close to those limits if Washington did the same.
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The Strategic Rocket Forces run three armies, twelve divisions, and roughly 324 ICBM launchers split among Topol-M, RS-18 fitted with Avangard, RS-20, RS-24 Yars and Yars-S, with Yars typically carrying three MIRVed warheads (Picture source: Vitaly Kuzmin)

The announcement lands while New START remains the last strategic-arms-limitation accord still in effect. It sets identical caps for both sides with well-defined counting rules, even though routine inspections have been suspended by Russia since 2023 and the outlook for any extension is uncertain. Practitioners of deterrence know these parameters and the compliance mechanics; what matters here is the dynamic they create, less verification means greater distrust and more room for edge-gaming.

To gauge the capability impact of leaving the PMDA, the current Russian triad is the relevant baseline, not the force structure of a decade ago. The Strategic Rocket Forces run three armies, twelve divisions, and roughly 324 ICBM launchers split among Topol-M, RS-18 fitted with Avangard, RS-20, RS-24 Yars and Yars-S, with Yars typically carrying three MIRVed warheads. This backbone, mixing silo-based and road-mobile TELs, underwrites alert posture and offers multiple penetration options. Long-range aviation fields Tu-160 and Tu-95MS bombers can carry Kh-55SM and Kh-102 cruise missiles, while the sea-based leg rests on twelve SSBNs, Borei and Borei-A classes with sixteen Bulava each, alongside Delta IV boats armed with R-29RMU2. In the background, Moscow is testing so-called novel systems, from the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle to the Poseidon autonomous underwater system, items that complicate any future arms-control regime.

The RS-24 Yars is an intercontinental-range ICBM deployed in silos and on TELs, generally in a three-warhead MIRV configuration, which explains its central role in the order of battle. At sea, the RSM-56 Bulava equips sixteen tubes on each Borei or Borei-A SSBN, ensuring a credible second-strike capability. In the air-launched segment, the Kh-102, the nuclear derivative of the Kh-101, allows Tu-95MS and Tu-160 crews to strike at long range without entering adversary air-defense bubbles. In short, if Moscow keeps more weapons-grade plutonium rather than neutralizing it as the PMDA required, it secures at least the depth of material needed to sustain or rebuild warheads compatible with these delivery systems.

The operational environment has also shifted. Russia revised its doctrine in September 2024 by lowering the declared employment threshold and announced last year the deployment of non-strategic nuclear capabilities in Belarus, with local units trained on Iskander and explicit references to “special warheads.” None of this has led to actual nuclear use in Ukraine, yet the rhetoric maintains deliberate ambiguity. With Iskander-M and 9M729 providing theater-range options, bombers able to launch Kh-102 at long distance, and Yars plus Bulava providing the top rung, quitting the PMDA changes nothing on tomorrow’s front line, but it removes a transparency lock useful for managing escalation.

This is no longer a sealed bilateral relationship. Since 2022, opportunistic ties between Moscow and both Pyongyang and Tehran, up to a mutual-assistance treaty with North Korea in summer 2024, have fostered a sense of latitude and raised risks of dual-use transfers. These partnerships blur the NPT order through diplomatic backing, technology exchanges, and, on the Chinese side, supplies of highly-enriched uranium for fast-reactor programs that generate plutonium after reprocessing. In that context, Russia’s exit from the PMDA sends a signal at odds with the image of a nuclear-weapon state acting as a pillar of the regime.

Finally, nuclear risks are rising across the board, driven by the rapid modernization of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean arsenals, joint patrols, and questions over the perceived credibility of U.S. extended deterrence in several regions. Washington and its allies face a clear, if costly, set of tasks. Hold the line in Ukraine, step up counter-proliferation measures that target dual-use parts and component networks, and reopen, wherever feasible, risk-reduction channels with Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang, including areas not covered by classic treaties. In the absence of a treaty, some experts advocate transparency gestures and minimal operational constraints to shrink uncertainty. The hard problem now is competition with two nuclear peers, China growing its warhead count and Russia preserving upload margins plus out-of-framework systems from Avangard to Poseidon. In this landscape, leaving the PMDA is not a technical footnote, it is a stitch in the safety net coming undone.