Another day, another rattled saber

Russia may revoke its ratification of a major nuclear weapons treaty, but the situation isn’t as dire as it sounds

Russian officials and Kremlin propagandists have been making inflammatory statements about the prospect of a nuclear standoff with the West for more than a year now, and they don’t show any sign of stopping. No sooner had the recent commotion over Russia Today executive Margarita Simonyan’s idea to detonate a nuclear bomb over Siberia abated than Vladimir Putin said at a conference that Russia might start conducting nuclear weapons tests for the first time in its modern history. After Putin’s speech, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced that Russia’s parliament would move to revoke its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to “mirror” the stand taken by the U.S., which has signed the agreement but not ratified it. The Duma’s International Affairs Committee will finish its review of the treaty on October 19.

To learn what effects these statements could have in the real world and whether Russia is actually planning to resume nuclear weapons tests, Meduza spoke to Maxim Starchak, an expert on Russian nuclear policy and a researcher at the Center for International and Defense Policy at Queen’s University in Canada.

‘Just another sideswipe at Washington’

On October 5, at Russia’s annual Valdai Discussion Club conference, Vladimir Putin made several vague and ominous statements about the prospect of Moscow conducting nuclear weapons tests, which were last performed on the country’s territory by the Soviet government in 1990. After Putin’s comments, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin reported that Russian lawmakers are considering revoking the country’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) — an agreement restricting the detonation of nuclear weapons, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1996.

According to nuclear policy expert Maxim Starchak, these statements, while escalatory, are no reason for panic. First, Russia has observed a moratorium on nuclear testing since 1991, before the CTBT even existed, and its leaders aren’t threatening to lift it. Additionally, even if Moscow withdraws its ratification of the CTBT, its signature will remain on the agreement. This would ostensibly bring Russia’s relationship with the CTBT in line with that of the U.S., which has signed the document but never ratified it. Judging by Volodin’s statements, that would be the whole point: Russia seeks to “mirror” U.S. policy by rescinding its ratification.

“For now, it’s just another sideswipe at the U.S., another step on the escalation ladder,” said Starchak. But in all likelihood, he added, the revocation’s main effect would be to signal to other countries that Russia is an unreliable partner in nuclear non-proliferation. “Moscow’s partners in Asian and African countries will see that Russia doesn’t care about their interests,” he said.

But why is it that Washington, which also has a moratorium on nuclear testing, never ratified the CTBT? According to Starchak, there are several reasons. For one thing, the agreement’s opponents in the U.S. worried that it would threaten the country’s national security by stopping it from performing the tests necessary to develop new weapons. Critics also argued that the CTBT’s monitoring system would fail to detect small explosions, rendering the document ineffective.

Starchak noted that the U.S. is far from the only country that hasn’t ratified the CTBT. For the agreement to come into effect, it must be signed and ratified by 44 specific states. Of these 44, China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, and the U.S. have not ratified the agreement, while India, North Korea, and Pakistan haven’t even signed it. “In other words, many of the U.S.’s geopolitical opponents are also evading formal participation in the CTBT,” he told Meduza. “And the U.S. has no incentive to be holier than the Pope.”

Fine, but what if Russia does resume nuclear testing?

Russia has multiple nuclear testing areas on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, where it set off numerous explosions between 1954 and 1990. According to Maxim Starchak, in the years since Moscow’s moratorium began in 1991, it has always kept the site ready for testing to resume.

“What kind of tests Russia might conduct, if it resumes them, is a tough question to answer. But it would probably be logical for these to be underground tests,” he told Meduza. “A real explosion with an energy release would quickly be detected by the U.S. If Russia decides to do this, it will likely be announced.”

Mikhail Kovalchuk, the head of Russia’s leading nuclear research institution, is another figure who’s advocated for the resumption of testing at Novaya Zemlya in recent months. In Starchak’s view, Kovalchuk’s interest is primarily a financial one. “Kovalchuk saw a chance to insert himself and is running ahead of the train,” he said.

RT head Margarita Simonyan recently came out with a much bolder proposal: dropping a nuclear bomb on Siberia to send a signal to the West. According to Starchak, this would primarily impact Siberia itself, damaging electronics in the area surrounding the blast, among other consequences. “Why Simonyan wants to damage her own country is a question I can’t answer,” he said.

Of course, not everyone in Russia is calling for renewed testing. According to Starchak, some experts and nuclear engineers are advocating for the moratorium to stay in effect, in part because testing a single nuclear warhead would provide little indication of the reliability of the rest of the country’s 1,600 currently deployed warheads. “Nuclear warheads are constantly being dismantled and gathered during the course of operations,” he said.

Ultimately, Starchak said, Putin is likely hearing arguments both for and against resuming tests. “In the end, his decision will be purely political,” he said.

A nuclear-powered ICBM?

Another claim Putin made at the Valdai Forum is that Russia recently conducted a successful test of the Burevestnik, an experimental nuclear-powered intercontinental cruise missile whose development Moscow first announced in 2018. According to The New York Times, satellite imagery confirms that Russia tested or prepared to test the weapon in recent weeks.

But Maxim Starchak says there’s no way to corroborate Putin’s claim that the test was successful, even if Russia did test the Burevestnik. Starchak notes that Russia did little to advertise the purported tests, unlike past tests of its Bulava and Sarmat missiles.

And while the successful development of the Burevestnik would mean Moscow possesses technology that Washington does not, Starchak said the U.S. has no need for this kind of weapon. “For the U.S., and also for Russia, the existence of a nuclear-powered missile that’s capable of traveling across vast distances and maneuvering to evade anti-missile defense systems is no more valuable than the intercontinental ballistic missiles that they already have, which are more reliable and also capable of evading anti-missile systems,” he said.

Interview by Meduza

English-language summary by Sam Breazeale