Russian nuclear test would send warning signal, prompt others to follow suit, say analysts

LONDON – Russia may be paving the way to conduct a nuclear test, a move that would sharply raise tensions with the West and likely prompt other world powers to resume testing for the first time this century.

President Vladimir Putin last week said Russia’s Parliament should consider

withdrawing Moscow’s ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT),

which prohibits tests involving nuclear explosions.

Parliamentary leaders were on Monday given 10 days to study how best to revoke Moscow’s ratification of a landmark treaty banning nuclear tests.

Some Western security analysts now see a growing likelihood of a Russian test, even though Mr Putin said the aim was only to mirror the position of the United States, which has signed but not ratified the treaty.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was on Tuesday cited as saying by the Interfax news agency that the US has been preparing for nuclear tests in the state of Nevada.

Russia would resume nuclear testing only as and when the US did the same, Mr Ryabkov was quoted as saying earlier.

Dr James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: “A Russian nuclear test is clearly very much on the cards now. I don’t think it’s a certainty, but it shouldn’t surprise anybody if that happens.”

Dr Matthew Harries, director of proliferation and nuclear policy at the RUSI think-tank in London, said cancelling Russia’s ratification would create a “legal and presentational framework for Russia to test if it wants to”.

If Moscow did conduct a test, he added, “it would be a strong form of signalling, to put the nuclear threat in people’s minds, to try to signal resolve and to evoke fear”.

Former Soviet and Russian diplomat Nikolai Sokov went further, saying a Russian nuclear test would mark a very serious escalation towards actually using an atomic weapon.

For that reason, Dr Sokov said, he did not expect Russia to test at this point. Rather, he added, rescinding ratification would be a political step and part of a wider review of Moscow’s security obligations to remove perceived imbalances and “level the field” with the US.

“At the moment, I see a nuclear test as unlikely, but the situation is very tense, and an escalation is not impossible,” said Dr Sokov, now senior fellow at the Vienna Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.

He said he could envisage a Russian nuclear test as part of a scenario where the Ukraine war was going very badly for Mr Putin.

“The trick is to get very close to nuclear use but avoid it – to force the adversary to take a step back so the US and Nato think: ‘Is it really worth it?’ To change the calculation of costs and benefits,” Dr Sokov said in a telephone interview.

“At some point, you may need to show that you’re very, very serious about possibly using nuclear weapons. That’s where a nuclear underground test can play a big role.”

Dr Sokov said he did not believe that Mr Putin was interested in actually using nuclear weapons, but the risk in such a scenario was that “you simply can lose control of events” and the logic of escalation could lead him to use them even if that was not his intention at the start.

Nuclear taboo

Russia has not conducted a nuclear test since 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It ratified the CTBT in 2000.

Although the treaty has not formally come into force because others including the US, China, India, Pakistan and Israel have not ratified, it has effectively made nuclear testing taboo.

Only North Korea has conducted a test involving a nuclear explosion this century.

Dr Acton said it was plausible, as Dr Sokov said, that Mr Putin was preparing the option of a nuclear test as a warning signal if things went badly for him in Ukraine.

But he added that it was also possible Mr Putin had already decided he was going to test, irrespective of what was happening in the war.

In that case, he said, the test would be more a statement about Russia’s intention to further develop its nuclear weapons, and about their growing importance in its defence posture at a time when its conventional forces have struggled in Ukraine.

Mr Putin last week highlighted two nuclear-capable weapons, the nuclear-propelled Burevestnik cruise missile and the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which he said Russia would now mass-produce and place on combat duty.

Since

the start of his invasion,

Mr Putin has served the West with repeated, pointed reminders of Russia’s nuclear might, including by announcing the stationing of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

He has also suspended Moscow’s participation in the New Start Treaty, which limits the number of nuclear warheads that Russia and the US can deploy.

His comments last week on the CTBT came in direct response to a question by security analyst Sergei Karaganov, who suggested to Mr Putin that Russia should lower its threshold for nuclear use in order to “sober up” the West.

Mr Putin said he saw no need to change the doctrine, which says Russia may use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or a threat to the existence of the state. But he was ambivalent on the question of nuclear testing.

“As a rule, experts say, with a new weapon you need to make sure that the special warhead will work without failures, and you need to conduct tests,” Mr Putin said.

He added that he was “not ready to say” whether tests were required.

RUSI’s Dr Harries said the next things to watch would be whether Russia would lay further groundwork for a test, perhaps by accusing Washington of preparing one, and whether it continued to support the CTBT by maintaining its share – as the US and China do – of the global monitoring stations that track test-related seismic activity and radiation.

Dr Acton said that if Russia carried out a test, the US was likely to follow, and that could prompt China, India and Pakistan to do the same.

CNN reported in September that Russia, the US and China have all built new facilities and dug new tunnels at their nuclear test sites in recent years, according to satellite imagery.

“The more countries test, the more are then likely to test, so I’m pretty concerned about this,” Dr Acton said. “If we’re in a world in which testing is going on, the first thing that shows us is that nuclear risks have risen.” REUTERS