MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia signaled on Friday it was preparing to revoke ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), after Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the possibility of resuming testing of the treaty. kind.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian Parliament, announced that the issue of revoking the treaty would “certainly” be considered at the next meeting of the State Duma council.
On Thursday, during a conference in Sochi, Vladimir Putin said that Russia should consider reversing ratification of the CTBT, because the United States, although a signatory, has never ratified the treaty.
The Kremlin leader said Russia’s nuclear doctrine did not need to be updated but indicated he was not yet ready to say whether Russia needed to resume nuclear testing.
A resumption of nuclear testing by Russia or the United States would mark a new milestone as tensions between the two countries reach their highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
“The situation in the world has changed,” Vyacheslav Volodin said. “Washington and Brussels have started a war against our country.”
The remarks by Vladimir Putin and Vyacheslav Volodin indicate that Russia is almost certain to reverse ratification of the treaty, which bans nuclear explosions by anyone and anywhere.
Russia, which inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, has the largest number of nuclear warheads in the world.
In the five decades between 1945 and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996, more than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out, including 1,032 by the United States and 715 by the Soviet Union, according to United Nations.
The Soviet Union made its last test in 1990 and the United States in 1992.
(Report by Guy Faulconbridge; French version Victor Goury-Laffont, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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