The arms control point man of Russia cautioned Donald Trump’s incoming administration that Moscow was considering a whole range of possible steps on nuclear testing due to what it said was Trump’s radical position on the issue.
Russian media quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees arms control, as saying that Trump took a radical position on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) during his first term.
“The international situation is complicated at the moment, the American policy in its various aspects is extremely hostile to us today,” Ryabkov said.
“So the optionality of our actions in the interests of ensuring security and the complex of possible measures and actions to realise this – and to send politically appropriate signals, in addition to what practitioners are considering – does not contain any exceptions.”
During Trump’s first 2017-2021 term as president, his administration discussed whether or not to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test since 1992, the Washington Post reported in 2020.
Post-Soviet Russia has not carried out a nuclear test. The Soviet Union last tested in 1990. President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would consider testing a nuclear weapon if the United States did.
Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, only a few countries have tested nuclear weapons, according to the Arms Control Association: the United States last tested in 1992, China and France in 1996, India and Pakistan in 1998, and North Korea in 2017.
Last month, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia would keep testing its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile in combat and had stock ready for use. In contrast, Ukraine said it was already developing air systems to counter the weapon.
Putin was speaking a day after Russia fired the new intermediate-range weapon into Ukraine for the first time, a step he said was prompted by Ukraine’s use of U.S. ballistic missiles and British cruise missiles to hit Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv was working with its Western partners to work out systems to counter “new risks”.
Putin described the first use of Oreshnik as a successful test and said more would follow.
Team Bharatshakti
(With inputs from Reuters)
