Lame-duck Trump administration is negotiating new nuclear weapons agreement with Putin: report

Russian President Vladimir Putin is negotiating a new nuclear agreement with the United States during a chaotic transition period for the country. While Republicans claim "fraud" over ballot counting, Putin seems to be exercising his power.

Putin said in the meeting, "Overall, Russia has been a firm and consistent proponent of reinforcing and improving strategic stability mechanisms and arms control frameworks. We have forwarded our proposals on devising a new “security equation” to our US partners. These proposals take into consideration all factors affecting strategic stability with a special emphasis on first-strike capability. We believe a first-strike attack to be unacceptable. Russia’s proposals could lay the groundwork for further comprehensive dialogue with the United States about the future framework to control nuclear-missile weapons. This is critical for our two countries and for the whole world, considering that we are the two biggest nuclear powers."

He added, "Russia will maintain its nuclear capability at the level it deems appropriate. It is true that with a number of strategic weapons our country has left other leading military powers far behind," a post on Facebook said. "As I said, this is the first time in history that our country, Russia, is not catching up, but producing weapons that are years or even decades ahead of similar foreign systems. Some of our weapons are second to none in the world, and this will probably be the case for a long time to come."