Russia Raises Nuclear Weapons Test Fears as It Pulls Out of Treaty

Russia's parliament voted Tuesday to revoke ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in the first of three readings, raising fears that Moscow will resume nuclear testing.

Members of the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, voted unanimously—412 votes to zero—to revoke Moscow's ratification of the treaty. The bill must pass three readings in the lower house and receive approval from the upper house before it is sent to Russian President Vladimir Putin's desk to be signed into law.

The landmark Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty prohibits "any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion" anywhere in the world. Arms control experts have said that Moscow withdrawing from the treaty shows that Russia, which possesses the world's largest nuclear arsenal, is ready to resume nuclear testing.

Moscow has said it would not resume nuclear weapons testing unless Washington does so first.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was adopted in 1996 by the UN General Assembly. The document was ratified by Russia, but not by the United States and China.

Putin first announced on October 5 that Russia may abandon the nuclear test ban treaty. The bill's third reading is scheduled for October 19.

Earlier on Tuesday, Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said Moscow was pulling out from the treaty because of the "irresponsible attitude" of the U.S. to global security.

"In the interests of ensuring the security of our country, we are withdrawing the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty," said Volodin on his Telegram channel, adding that while Moscow had ratified the nuclear test ban treaty in 2000, Washington had failed to do so because of its "irresponsible attitude to global security issues."

"The Russian Federation will do everything to protect its citizens and to maintain global strategic parity," Volodin said. "For 23 years we have been waiting for the U.S. to ratify this treaty."

Leonid Slutsky, the head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, has said that Russia will revoke ratification of the treaty, but "will continue to fulfill all its obligations under the treaty, as well as observe a moratorium on nuclear tests."

Last month, Mikhail Kovalchuk, Putin's ally, proposed testing nuclear weapons at Russia's nuclear test site in Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic Ocean archipelago, "at least once" to scare the West.

Moscow has not carried out a nuclear test since before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union last carried out a nuclear weapons test in 1990.

The Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test, an underwater explosion, on Novaya Zemlya in 1955. Until 1990, a total of 130 tests were carried out at the site, including the October 1961 detonation of the largest nuclear weapon ever tested, the 50MT AN602 Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb, according to the non-profit organization Nuclear Threat Initiative.

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