The Duma will study at an upcoming meeting the withdrawal of Moscow’s ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the president of the Lower House of the Russian Parliament, Viacheslav Volodin, announced this Friday. The reason, he argued, is the “war unleashed” against Russia.
Although the decision may indicate that Moscow is going to scare the world again with atomic tests, the Kremlin assured that this is not its intention. According to his spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, what he wants is to expose the United States, which never ratified this 1996 international treaty.
The issue will be raised “at the next meeting of the Duma Council,” or meeting of spokespersons, Volodin said in a message posted on Telegram. “The situation in the world has changed. Washington and Brussels have unleashed a war against our country. Today’s challenges require new solutions,” he wrote.
In his opinion, the revocation of ratification “will respond to national interests” and will be a mirror response from the United States, which has not yet ratified the treaty.
The announcement comes a day after the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, publicly requested it during his speech at the Valdai International Debate Club, held in Sochi.
However, the Kremlin stated hours later that it has no intention of testing atomic bombs. “This is not a declaration of intention to conduct nuclear tests,” Peskov said.
The spokesman for the Russian presidency specified that Putin was referring to bringing the situation to the same level, since the United States, unlike Russia, has not ratified the CTBT.
“What did the president mean? He was mainly referring to the need to bring the de facto situation to a common denominator. We signed and ratified it a long time ago, but the Americans did not ratify it,” Peskov stressed.
“To bring the situation to a common denominator, the president allowed the possibility of revoking this ratification. Volodin has declared his willingness to do so. This does not constitute a declaration of intention to carry out nuclear tests,” the spokesman said.
The United States and Russia are by far the largest nuclear powers on the planet. In recent years, both have abandoned several nuclear disarmament agreements reached during the Cold War.
The last step back occurred in the middle of the war between Russia and Ukraine. Putin announced last February that Russia was suspending (although not withdrawing) its participation in the Start III or New Start treaty, which was signed in 2010 by the presidents of both countries at the time (Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev) and which reduced the number of nuclear warheads. that both countries could deploy 1,550.
Moscow and Washington failed to renew it in 2021, and just after Joe Biden assumed the US presidency, both countries decided to extend its validity until 2026.
