Loading...
New START expired on 4 February 2026, ending the last treaty limits on the two largest nuclear arsenals and with them the inspection and data-exchange regime. The UN called the lapse a grave moment and coverage widely anticipates an unconstrained arms race. Talks on a successor have not stopped -- proposals have been floated and reported as close to agreement more than once, and China has publicly urged the two to resume strategic-stability dialogue -- but nothing has been concluded. Moscow attributes the collapse to rejected proposals and to the Golden Dome missile-defence programme; Washington points to Russian systems built outside any treaty's scope.
Each card below is one coalition with its own frame on the same contested phenomenon.
Weekly attributed-headline count per narrative. Visual asymmetry is signal: some coalitions dominate the vocabulary, others stay sporadic.
Loaded vocabulary per coalition and recent headlines under each frame.
Per-week distribution of events on this friction node. Click a bar to see that week's top events.
Click a week bar to select. Light blue = active week.
Countries directly involved in these tensions, or whose own outlets cover them.
Western mainstream and arms-control coverage treating the February 2026 lapse of the last US-Russia warhead limits as a genuine loss — the end of inspections and data exchange, the removal of predictability — and reporting proposals for a replacement pact as a necessary corrective rather than a concession.
Russian state coverage attributing the collapse of the strategic framework to Washington: post-New START proposals were rejected, the Golden Dome missile-defence programme undermines mutual vulnerability, and Moscow presents itself as willing to observe limits if the US does the same. Novel Russian systems are framed as responses to that programme rather than as its cause.
