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.
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