Thursday, November 6, 2025 - Russian President, Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, November 5, ordered his top officials to draft proposals on possible nuclear weapons testing, a move directly following a statement last week by US President Donald Trump that the United States would resume such tests.
Speaking at a meeting with his Security Council, Putin
reaffirmed Russia’s conditional stance: that Russia had always strictly adhered
to its obligations under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), but
that if the United States or any other nuclear power conducted such a test,
Russia would be compelled to do so as well, citing an "appropriate and
adequate response."
Defence Minister Andrei Belousov went further during the
meeting, telling Putin that recent remarks and actions by the United States
which has been engaging in what Belousov called an “accelerated modernization
of its strategic offensive weapons” meant that it was “advisable to prepare for
full-scale nuclear tests” immediately.
Belousov claimed that Russia's Arctic testing site at Novaya
Zemlya could host such tests at short notice, which would mark the country's
return to Cold War-era atomic posturing after a 35-year moratorium.
Putin subsequently issued his formal instruction: “I am
instructing the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry... the special services
and relevant civilian agencies to do everything possible to collect additional
information on the issue, analyse it at the Security Council and make agreed
proposals on the possible start of work on the preparation of nuclear weapons
tests.”
The directive from Putin is a direct reaction to President
Trump's announcement last week that he had instructed the Pentagon to start
testing US nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Russia and China. This move
stirred global concern, as the US last conducted an explosive nuclear test in
1992.
However, the US position has been muddled by clarification
from Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who later said the testing ordered by Trump
would focus on “non-critical explosions” or systems tests, and would not
include nuclear detonations at this time.
Despite this, Trump has continued to suggest that other
countries, including Russia and China, are already conducting low-yield,
underground nuclear tests in secret.
While the US signed the CTBT, it never ratified it; Russia,
conversely, rescinded its ratification in 2023 but maintained it would only
conduct an explosive test if the US did so first. Post-Soviet Russia has never
conducted a nuclear explosive test, with the last Soviet test occurring in
1990.
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