Russia warns US on possible nuclear testing under Trump

Russia’s arms control point man cautioned Donald Trump’s incoming administration on Friday that Moscow was considering a whole range of possible steps on nuclear testing due to what it said was Trump’s radical position on the issue.

The Kommersant newspaper quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees arms control, as saying that Trump took a radical position on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) during his first term.

“The international situation is extremely difficult at the moment, the American policy in its various aspects is extremely hostile to us today,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying.

“So the optionality of our actions in the interests of ensuring security and the complex of possible measures and actions to realise this — and to send politically appropriate signals, in addition to what practitioners are considering — does not contain any exceptions.”

During Trump’s first 2017-2021 term as president, his administration discussed whether or not to conduct the first US nuclear test since 1992, the Washington Post reported in 2020.

Post-Soviet Russia has not carried out a nuclear test. The Soviet Union last tested in 1990. President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would consider testing a nuclear weapon if the United States did.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, only a few countries have tested nuclear weapons, according to the Arms Control Association: the United States last tested in 1992, China and France in 1996, India and Pakistan in 1998, and North Korea in 2017.