- The diplomat says the situation is very difficult.
- Russia says it is studying the option in all its aspects.
- The last time Russia tested nuclear weapons was in 1990.
A senior Russian diplomat said the possibility of Moscow resuming nuclear weapons tests remains uncertain, based on what he described as hostile policies of the United States.
“This is an open question,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told TASS news agency on Saturday in response to a question about whether Moscow was considering resuming tests.
“Without predicting anything, let me simply say that the situation is very difficult. It is constantly under consideration from all its components and from all its aspects.”
In September, Ryabkov referred to President Vladimir Putin’s statement that Russia would not conduct a test as long as the United States refrained from carrying it out.
Moscow has not conducted any nuclear weapon test since 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But Putin this month lowered the threshold governing the country’s nuclear doctrine in response to what Moscow sees as an escalation by Western countries that support Ukraine in the 33-month-old war that pits it against Russia.
Under the new conditions, Russia could consider launching a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack on Russia or its ally Belarus that “posed a serious threat to their sovereignty and (or) territorial integrity.”
These changes came after the United States authorized Ukraine to use Western missiles against targets inside Russia.
The Russian test site is located in the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, where the Soviet Union conducted more than 200 nuclear tests.
Putin signed a law last year withdrawing Russia’s ratification of the Global Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests. He said the move aims to bring Russia in line with the United States, which signed the treaty but never ratified it.