Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law Thursday, cancelling Russia’s ratification of a key nuclear treaty and allowing new atomic weapons tests, according to Politico.
Putin stated that cancelling Russia’s ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) merely “mirrors” the position of the United States, which signed but never ratified the treaty.
Both houses of the Russian parliament approved the cancellation of ratification unanimously, and then Putin signed the final approval, according to Russian media.
Russian officials explained that withdrawing from the treaty does not mean resuming nuclear testing. Moscow will only conduct tests if the United States decides to do the same, however, the Kremlin’s decision has raised concerns among analysts.
In October, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of a news agency, sparked a negative reaction when suggested detonating a nuclear bomb over Siberia as a warning to the West. Moscow immediately rejected her statement, with official spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasising that Russia had not abandoned its moratorium on nuclear testing.
In October, as the State Duma was preparing to vote to withdraw from the CTBT, Russia conducted a simulated nuclear strike in an exercise supervised by the president himself.
The CTBT, which bans “all nuclear explosions, whether for military or peaceful purposes,” has been signed by 187 countries and ratified by 178. Russia ratified the treaty in 2000, and the US is one of several countries that had never ratified the ban, including other nuclear powers such as China, India and Pakistan.
