Russian parliament leaders to discuss revoking ratification of nuclear test ban treaty

Russia’s Duma council, in which leaders of parliament’s lower house discuss legislative moves, will discuss the country’s possible withdrawal from the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty today. The move comes after president Vladimir Putin held out the possibility that Russia could resume nuclear testing for the first time in more than three decades.

A resumption of nuclear tests by Russia, the United States or China could signal the start of a new nuclear arms race between the big powers, which stopped nuclear testing in the years after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

On Thursday Mr Putin said Russia’s nuclear doctrine – laying out the conditions in which he would deploy a nuclear weapon – did not need updating but he was not yet ready to say whether Moscow needed to resume nuclear tests.

Mr Putin said Russia could look at revoking ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as the United States had signed, but not ratified, it.

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That prompted chair of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, to say he would discuss the matter at the next meeting of Russia’s Duma Council.

It will meet at on Monday afternoon.

On Friday, Russia’s envoy to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organizsation (CTBTO) said Moscow would revoke its ratification of the pact, a move that Washington denounced as endangering “the global norm” against nuclear tests.

For some scientists and campaigners, the nuclear bomb testing during the Cold War highlighted the folly of nuclear brinkmanship.

But the Ukraine war has raised tension between Moscow and Washington to its highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, just as China seeks to bolster its nuclear arsenal to match its status as an emerging superpower.

By revoking the ratification, Russia is sending the United States a warning that Moscow can fundamentally change the assumptions of post-Cold War nuclear planning.

Signed by 187 countries and ratified by 178, the CTBT cannot enter into force until eight specific holdouts have signed and ratified it.

The United States, China, Egypt, Iran, and Israel have signed but not ratified it. India, North Korea and Pakistan have not signed.

The Soviet Union last tested in 1990 and the United States in 1992. Russia, which inherited most of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, has never done so. But signs have emerged that testing could resume.

Last month CNN said satellite images showed growing activity at nuclear test sites in Russia, China and the United States. In 2020, the Washington Post said the then-Trump administration had discussed whether to hold a nuclear test.

Ten nuclear tests have taken place since the CTBT. India and Pakistan conducted two each in 1998, while North Korea held tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 (twice) and 2017, according to the United Nations. – Reuters