Moscow yesterday indicated that it was moving swiftly toward revoking ratification for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) after Russian President Vladimir Putin held out the possibility of resuming nuclear testing.
A resumption in nuclear tests by Russia, the US or both would be profoundly destabilizing at a time when tensions between the two nations are greater than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Putin on Thursday said Russia’s nuclear doctrine did not need updating, but that he was not yet ready to say whether or not Russia needed to resume nuclear tests.
Photo: Reuters
The Kremlin chief said that Russia should look at revoking ratification of the CTBT as the US had signed it, but not ratified.
Just hours after Putin’s words, Russian Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the legislature’s bosses would swiftly consider the need to revoke Russia’s ratification for the treaty.
“The situation in the world has changed,” Volodin said.
“Washington and Brussels have unleashed a war against our country. At the next meeting of the State Duma Council, we will definitely discuss the issue of revoking the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,” he said.
Putin’s words, followed by Volodin’s, indicate that Russia is almost certain to revoke ratification of the treaty, which bans nuclear explosions by everyone, everywhere.
Russia, which inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, has the world’s biggest store of nuclear warheads.
In the five decades between 1945 and the 1996 CTBT, more than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out, 1,032 of them by the US and 715 by the Soviet Union, according to the UN.
The Soviet Union last tested in 1990. The US last tested in 1992.
Since the CTBT was signed, 10 nuclear tests have taken place. India conducted two in 1998, Pakistan also two in 1998, and North Korea conducted tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 (twice) and 2017, according to the UN.
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
The Bolivian government on Friday struck a deal with protesting miners, but was still grappling with blockades and demonstrations by other workers across La Paz. Other groups are still blocking access roads into the city, which is also the seat of the government. Police on Thursday prevented the miners from entering the main square by using tear gas, while the demonstrators hurled stones and explosives with slingshots. Protests against the policies of Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz have convulsed the Andean nation since early this month, and roadblocks were choking routes into La Paz throughout Friday, the national road authority said. Miners demanded that Paz
The Philippines said it has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow it to arrest former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s chief drug war enforcer to stand trial in an international tribunal. The International Criminal Court (ICC) last week unsealed an arrest warrant against Philippine Senator Ronald dela Rosa, accusing him along with Duterte and other “coperpetrators” of the “crime against humanity of murder.” Dela Rosa briefly sought refuge in the Philippine Senate last week while asking the Philippine Supreme Court to stop an ongoing attempt by government agents to arrest him. “By his own conduct, he has placed himself outside the protection of
The researchers in Ireland looked at their computer screen, marveling at a medieval book tracked down in a Roman library. They flipped through its digitized pages and found their sought-after treasure: the oldest surviving English poem. “We were extremely surprised. We were speechless. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we first saw that,” said Elisabetta Magnanti, a visiting research fellow at Trinity College Dublin’s school of English. The poem was also within the main body of Latin text, she said, calling it “extraordinary.” Composed in Old English by a Northumbrian agricultural worker in the 7th century, Caedmon’s Hymn appears within some copies of
RSS