(Web Desk) - The last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between the US and Russia has expired, unleashing the threat of a 'runaway arms race.'
At midnight on Thursday, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), signed by both superpowers in 2010, ended as no agreement on an extension was reached, allowing the US and Russia to now build up their nuclear stockpiles without restriction.
Russia has already blamed the US for walking away from the treaty, with Russian politician Alexei Zhuravlev issuing a chilling warning about his nation's ability to single-handedly cause a nuclear apocalypse.
Zhuravlev, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, said: 'Russia currently possesses weapons capable of wiping out any country, or even completely destroying the entire planet.'
The New START treaty had limited both sides to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads each, while also allowing mutual inspections and data sharing for transparency.
A limit was also set on the number of long-range delivery systems the US and Russia could have, restricting each nation to 700 active platforms capable of carrying nuclear warheads, including missiles, submarines, and bombers.
Now that New START has expired, both countries are free to build up and deploy more of these weapons without any binding limits or required verification.
Daniel Holz, a member of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, warned that the world has never been closer to Doomsday than it is today, fearing that the end of New START will trigger 'a runaway nuclear arms race' involving multiple countries.
Zhuravlev claimed that Russia was willing to extend New START for another year, but the Trump Administration has demanded that any nuclear arms treaty include restrictions on the country with the third-largest nuclear stockpile - China.