Putin officially opens door to new nuke testing

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a law effectively revoking Russia’s ratification of a key nuclear treaty, opening up the possibility the Kremlin could conduct new atomic weapons testing.

Putin previously said revoking Russia’s 2000 ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CNTBT) is a move that would merely “mirror” the position taken by the United States, which has signed but never ratified the treaty.

The revocation was approved unanimously by the lower and upper houses of Russia’s parliament last month, before being sent to Putin for final approval. He signed it on Thursday, Russian state news agencies reported.

Russian officials have said that exiting the treaty does not mean the Kremlin will resume nuclear testing and that it would only consider doing so if the U.S. decides to do the same, but Moscow’s decision raised some concerns among analysts.

Putin also said in October that he was “not ready” to discuss whether Russia will conduct tests or not. But since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin has made veiled nuclear threats toward the West, even stashing nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

In October, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of state-funded broadcaster RT, sparked a backlash when she suggested Moscow should detonate a nuclear bomb over Siberia as a warning to the West. The Kremlin rejected her statement, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stressing that Russia had not abandoned its moratorium on nuclear testing.

In October, as the State Duma prepared to vote on withdrawing from the CNTBT, Russia conducted a simulated nuclear strike in a drill overseen by Putin himself.

The CNTBT, which bans “all nuclear explosions, whether for military or peaceful purpose,” was signed by 187 countries and ratified by 178. Russia originally ratified the treaty in 2000. The U.S. is one of several countries that never ratified the ban, including other nuclear powers such as China, India and Pakistan.