Vladimir Putin ordered plans to restart Russia’s nuclear tests after Donald Trump said last week that America would carry out new weapon trials.
The Russian defence minister advised Putin to prepare “for full-scale nuclear tests” given the US president’s decision, sparking fears of a new nuclear weapons race.
The Russian president said his country had strictly adhered to its obligations under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty but that if the United States or any nuclear power tested such a weapon, then Russia would do so too.
Defence Minister Andrei Belousov told Putin that recent remarks and actions by the United States meant that it was “advisable to prepare for full-scale nuclear tests” immediately.
Belousov said Russia’s Arctic testing site at Novaya Zemlya could host such tests at short notice.
“I am instructing the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry... the special services and relevant civilian agencies to do everything possible to collect additional information on the issue, analyse it at the Security Council and make agreed proposals on the possible start of work on the preparation of nuclear weapons tests,” Putin said.
The United States last tested in 1992, China and France in 1996 and the Soviet Union in 1990.
Post-Soviet Russia, which inherited the Soviet nuclear arsenal, has never done so.
Recently, Russia tested a nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, which can carry a nuclear warhead.
Days later, Trump told US defence chiefs to carry out nuclear testing to keep pace with Russia and China, though gave little detail on what he was proposing.
"Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis," he wrote on social media before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright later stressed that America was not planning to carry out tests with new nuclear explosions, insisting they would be “what we call non-critical explosions”.
Only North Korea has carried out a nuclear test explosion in this century, according to the Arms Control Association, and a moratoirum on such trials was announced by Pyongyang seven year ago.
Putin threatened earlier in his war in Ukraine to use nuclear weapons, though, the West did not detect any change to Russia’s nuclear readiness to deploy such missiles.
Russia said on Wednesday that its forces were advancing north inside the key city of Pokrovsk, in the Donetsk eastern province of Ukraine, in a drive to take full control of it.
But the Ukrainian army said its units were battling hard to try to stop the Russians from gaining new ground.
Street fighting has been taking place, using drones, after hundreds of Russian soldiers infiltrated the city in small groups.
Ukraine has acknowledged that its troops face a difficult position in the strategic eastern city, once an important transport and logistics hub for the Ukrainian army, which Russia has been trying to capture for more than a year.
Russia sees the city as the gateway to its capture of the remaining 10%, or 1,930 square miles, of Ukraine’s eastern industrial Donbas region, one of its key aims in the almost four-year-old war.
The Russian defence ministry said two assault groups were destroying Ukrainian troops that were surrounded in several districts of the city and continuing an offensive pushing north through it.
Russian forces were clearing Ukrainian troops from settlements on Pokrovsk’s southeastern flank and had repelled Ukrainian attempts to break out of encirclement, it claimed.
The Ukrainian military denied that its troops were surrounded in Pokrovsk. It said they were trying to stop Russian soldiers from digging in while seeking to secure and protect logistics routes in the wider area.
“Measures are being taken to block the enemy, which is attempting to infiltrate and accumulate in the city of Pokrovsk,” the Ukrainian General Staff said in a statement.
“Active countermeasures are being taken against attempts by enemy infantry groups to gain a foothold.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday the area around Pokrovsk remained under severe pressure but that up to 300 Russian servicemen still in the city had made no gains in the past day and there were just 60 in another city, Kupiansk.
Moscow says capturing Pokrovsk would give it a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
