Russia says it is “no longer bound” by limits on the number of nuclear warheads it can deploy, as the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty with the United States is set to expire.

The New START treaty, which was signed in 2010, will expire on Thursday. Russia said that the US had not responded to President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to keep observing the missile and warhead limits in the treaty for another 12 months.

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“We assume that the parties to the New START treaty are no longer bound by any obligations or symmetrical declarations within the context of the treaty,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Essentially, our ideas are being deliberately ignored. This [US] approach appears mistaken and regrettable,” it said.

New START, which stands for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, limits the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons, those designed to hit an adversary’s key political, military and industrial centres.

Deployed weapons or warheads are those in active service and available for rapid use as opposed to those that are in storage or awaiting dismantlement.

The expiry of the treaty means that Moscow and Washington will both be free to increase missile numbers and deploy hundreds more strategic warheads, although this poses logistical challenges and will take time.

Despite the expiry of the treaty, US President Donald Trump has expressed interest in a new agreement to restrict nuclear weapons.

During an interview with The New York Times in January, Trump said of the New START treaty: “If it expires, it expires. … We’ll just do a better agreement.”

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Trump has also called for China to be involved in any future nuclear talks.

New START was a 10-year agreement signed by then-US President Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of Vladimir Putin who served a single term as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012. It came into effect in 2011.

Fears of new arms race

Security experts say the end of New START risks ushering in a new arms race that will also be fuelled by China’s rapid nuclear build-up.

“Without the treaty, each side will be free to upload hundreds of additional warheads onto their deployed missiles and heavy bombers, roughly doubling the sizes of their currently deployed arsenals in the most maximalist scenario,” Matt Korda, associate director for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told Reuters News Agency.

As the clock ticked towards the treaty’s expiry on Thursday, Pope Leo urged both sides to not abandon the limits set in the treaty.

“I issue an urgent appeal not to let this instrument lapse,” the first US-born pope said at his weekly audience. “It is more urgent than ever to replace the logic of fear and distrust with a shared ethic, capable of guiding choices toward the common good.”