Russia will not test a nuclear weapon as long as the United States refrains from testing, according to President Vladimir Putin's top arms control official. This statement comes amid speculation that the Kremlin might abandon its post-Soviet nuclear test moratorium. As the United States and its European allies contemplate allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western missiles, there has been growing speculation about Russia possibly resuming nuclear testing.
Last week, Russian state-run newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an interview with Andrei Sinitsyn, head of Russia's nuclear test site at Novaya Zemlya, who said the site is prepared for full-scale testing. Putin, the ultimate decision-maker for the world's largest nuclear power, has tied any resumption of Russian nuclear testing to similar actions by the United States. He has also stated that he does not need to use such weapons to win the war in Ukraine.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees Russian arms control policy, told Russian news agencies that "nothing has changed" regarding the speculation that a nuclear test could be Russia's response to missile strikes deep into Russia. Ryabkov emphasized that Russia can conduct such tests, but will not do so if the United States refrains from such steps. He noted that preparations at Russia's Novaya Zemlya nuclear test site to make it "fully ready" were in response to actions by the United States, which he said had improved its own testing infrastructure.
Russia, the United States, and China have all built new facilities and dug new tunnels at their nuclear test sites in recent years, according to CNN. Post-Soviet Russia has not carried out a nuclear test. The Soviet Union last tested in 1990, and the United States in 1992. No country except North Korea has conducted a test involving a nuclear explosion in this century.
Ryabkov expressed concern over reports that the United States had no immediate plans to withdraw a mid-range missile system deployed in the Philippines. Russia is considering its response, including in the military sphere. The 2-1/2-year-old Ukraine war has caused the worst confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which is considered the closest the two Cold War superpowers came to intentional nuclear war.
After the Cuban crisis, then-US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev explored the idea of a ban on nuclear testing. In 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally revoked Russia's ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), aligning Russia with the United States. The resumption of testing would mark the beginning of a new and precarious nuclear era as Russia, the United States, and China race to modernize their nuclear weapons.
Washington views Russia and China as its biggest nation-state threats. Beijing and Moscow, which have strengthened their partnership during the Ukraine war, see the United States as a declining superpower that has caused chaos worldwide. The Soviet Union shocked the West by testing its first nuclear bomb in 1949 in Kazakhstan. The US opened the nuclear era in July 1945 by testing a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico, then dropped atom bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a month later to end World War II.
For many scientists and campaigners, the extent of nuclear bomb testing during the Cold War highlighted the dangers of nuclear brinkmanship, which could ultimately destroy humanity and contaminate the planet for hundreds of thousands of years.
