For the first time in over three decades, Vladimir Putin has hinted that Russia may resume nuclear testing. He claimed that Russia has successfully tested the Burevestnik strategic cruise missile, which is nuclear-capable.
Russia’s Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile system, in which each missile, ten nuclear warheads can be carried, is nearly complete, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech delivered Thursday at the annual Valdai Discussion Club in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
He warned that no one would survive an attack on Russia, and he didn’t even feel they needed to carry out nuclear testing.
Putin also claimed in his address that Wagner mercenary head Yevgeny Prigozhin’s jet crash in August was caused by hand grenades detonating inside the aircraft rather than a missile attack.
The bodies of those who perished in the accident contained shrapnel pieces of hand grenades.
Russian conservative political scientists and commentators had already said that restarting nuclear testing would send a strong message to Moscow’s western foes, prompting Putin to make his address. Putin warned that there have been “calls to start testing” atomic weapons again.
Russia’s tolerance of the West’s support for Ukraine and seeming refusal to compromise has reportedly worn thin, leading some to advocate for Putin to launch a nuclear bomb.
Recently, RT’s editor-in-chief and chief, Margarita Simonyan, urged that Russia drop a nuke on Siberia.
More than 2,000 nuclear tests were conducted between 1945 and the 1996 comprehensive test ban pact, with the United States conducting 1,032 and the Soviet Union 715. Once again, it was in 1990 when the Soviet Union conducted its last nuclear test. It has been since 1992 that the United States has done this.
In response to a question about whether or not Russia needs to undertake nuclear tests, Putin said, “I am not ready to answer whether we truly need to do tests or not.”
At a time when tensions between the United States and Russia are at their highest since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, a restart of nuclear tests by any country would be immensely destabilizing.
Putin stated that everything is adaptable, but I don’t see the point. In my opinion, no reasonable person would consider using nuclear weapons against Russia.
