Putin Resuming Nuclear Tests /Lt Col Daniel Davis

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Now Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov says that work is underway on a possible nuclear test. Lavrov further said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a directive to assess the feasibility of preparing for nuclear tests. Putin's directive has been accepted and a study is underway. Lavrov further added that the public will be informed of the results. Putin's order was in response to the American President Donald Trump's surprise announcement last week where he said that the United States was going to resume nuclear testing.

Putin had said that Russia had always strictly adhered to its obligations under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. But he also added that if the United States or any nuclear power would test such a weapon, then Russia would do so too. This has threatened to upend one of the last symbolic restraints of the post–Cold War order.

Putin has also signaled the ushering in of a new age of nuclear superweapons—weapons designed to dominate the 21st century and ensure strategic parity with the United States and its allies. Speaking at a ceremony honoring the engineers and developers behind these weapons, Putin said that Russia is not threatening anyone, framing these advances as part of a global nuclear balance and not aggression.

One of the weapons in question is the Burevestnik. It is a nuclear-powered cruise missile with virtually unlimited range. There's also the Poseidon, a nuclear-powered underwater drone capable of massive destruction. Some reports state that it can even trigger radioactive tsunamis.

Russia is looking set to resume its nuclear testing, and it would be Moscow's first nuclear test since 1990, when the Soviet Union carried out its last nuclear test. The last time the United States exploded a nuclear bomb was in 1992. China and France did so in 1996. In the past, the United States has conducted over 1,000 nuclear weapons tests, closely followed by the USSR, which conducted over 700 nuclear explosions.

Beyond the symbolism, the resumption of nuclear tests will reshape the strategic calculus between Moscow, Washington, and Beijing. It could also prompt a cascade of responses that redraws the contours of global nuclear policy. Russia and the United States are the world's biggest nuclear powers, holding about 88% of the world's nuclear weapons. Russia possesses 5,580 nuclear weapons while the United States has about 5,044.

Russia's return to nuclear testing will shatter a global moratorium that has largely held for about three decades. It will further weaken the already fragile Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and effectively undermine decades of progress toward arms control.

Earlier, I spoke with retired Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a military expert who retired from the U.S. Army after 21 years of active service. He said the following:

He was referring—Trump was referring—to the fact that the Russian side had tested missile platforms in the new Burevestnik cruise missile, a nuclear-powered, nuclear-tipped cruise missile, and the Poseidon submarine drone underwater missile. It's also nuclear-driven and has capacity for a nuclear warhead. There was some question of whether Trump misspoke, whether he meant the U.S. would also test platforms—like some of our carriers, the Minuteman III, etc.—or whether he meant an actual nuclear test. That's the word he used. When given the opportunity to clarify, Trump didn’t. He just said something like, "We'll see." In the aftermath of that, you had the Russian side, with Putin himself, saying that if the United States conducts a nuclear test—an explosion, whether above ground or underground—then Russia would too.