One of Vladimir Putin’s ministers warned Donald Trump that Russia would not be “ruling anything out” when it came to nuclear testing once the president-elect is in office.
Post-Soviet Russia has not tested their nuclear weapons since 1990 while the US last tested in 1992.
But, deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov suggested this could all change when the new administration gets into power, because Trump repeatedly sabotaged key nuclear arms control agreements last time he was in the White House.
He pulled the US out of the UN Security Council’s nuclear agreement with Iran, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty which banned missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km and the Open Skies agreement which allowed unarmed aerial surveillance flights.
Trump’s first administration also considered disrupting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CNTBT), which bans all nuclear explosions whether for military or peaceful purposes, and conducting a nuclear test.
This treaty – signed by 187 countries including Russia and the US in 1996 – was never ratified by the US. Putin then formally revoked Russia’s ratification of the treaty in 2023.
There is speculation Trump may look to conduct a nuclear test again to send a message of American strength to his rivals.
Speaking to Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, Putin’s minister Ryabkov said: “The international situation is extremely difficult at the moment, the American policy in its various aspects is extremely hostile to us today.
“So the options for us to act in the interests of ensuring security and the potential measures and actions we have to do this – and to send politically appropriate signals... does not rule anything out.”
The US, which has 5,044 warheads, and Russia, which has 5,580, are the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
Between the first ever nuclear test in 1945 and the 1996 CNTBT, more than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out, 1,032 by the US and 715 by the Soviet Union.
But Putin has often deployed nuclear sabre-rattling in an effort to prevent Ukraine’s allies getting directly involved in the war.
After the US and the UK finally authorised Kyiv to use their long-range missiles against Russia in November, the Russian president also lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike.
He said Russia could now use it if there was a non-nuclear attack against its country by Ukraine.
Ryabkov’s comments also come as a surprise considering Trump is expected to be much more lenient towards Putin than outgoing US president Joe Biden, having previously called the Russian leader’s invasion of Ukraine “genius”.