Russia accuses US of nuclear testing site activity, says it won’t test unless US does
- Russia is moving to withdraw from an international treaty banning nuclear weapons testing
- US rejects Moscow allegation it was making preparations at a nuclear test site in Nevada
Russia accused the United States of carrying out preparations at its nuclear test site in Nevada but said that Moscow would not restart its own nuclear testing programme unless Washington did.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made the charge as Russia’s lower house of parliament urgently studies how to revoke Moscow’s ratification of a landmark treaty banning nuclear tests and as tensions with the West are at their highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
A US State Department spokesperson on Tuesday rejected Ryabkov’s allegation, calling it “a disturbing effort by Moscow to heighten nuclear risks and raise tensions in the context of its illegal war in Ukraine”.
The spokesperson reiterated that the United States has no plans to abandon a 1992 moratorium on nuclear test blasts in line with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which Washington has signed but not ratified.
Washington, however, is preparing to conduct next year at the Nevada Test Site two so-called subcritical experiments involving fissile materials in amounts too small to ignite a nuclear explosion.