Russian President Putin has withdrawn Russia’s ratification of the ban on nuclear weapons tests by law. He explained that his country must have the same opportunities as the USA, a nuclear power.
By signing a law, Russian President Vladimir Putin has withdrawn his country from the treaty banning nuclear weapons tests. Both chambers of parliament had previously approved the project. The termination of the contract was a reaction to the “cynicism” of the USA, the chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, emphasized during the parliamentary hearing.
Putin had previously justified his withdrawal from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by saying that Russia must have the same options as the second major nuclear power, the USA. Unlike Russia, the USA never ratified the treaty. However, the United States, like all other countries except North Korea, has adhered to the testing ban since the 1990s.
The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty itself was passed in 1996 to curb the further development of nuclear weapons. However, it has not yet come into force because not enough countries have ratified it. The nuclear powers France and Great Britain as well as 176 other countries agreed to the agreement.
Putin has threatened to do so several times Use of nuclear weapons
Russia’s parliament ratified the agreement in 2000 – six months after Putin was first elected as Kremlin leader. Since the start of his offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian president has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons. In the summer of 2023, Moscow stationed tactical nuclear weapons in its ally Belarus. At the beginning of October, Putin said he was “not ready to say” whether Russia would resume its nuclear weapons tests.
Russia also pulled out of the New Start Agreement
The CTBT organization in Vienna operates a global network of measuring stations that can detect nuclear tests using pressure waves as well as chemical and nuclear traces. Russia wants to continue to provide data from its own 32 stations. Moscow said Russia would only test nuclear weapons again if the United States did the same.
In February, Russia also suspended its participation in the New Start Agreement. The 2010 treaty with the USA to limit their respective nuclear weapons stocks, which runs until 2026, is the last bilateral nuclear agreement between Moscow and Washington.