Kremlin says Russia has not abandoned moratorium on nuclear tests

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia had not abandoned a moratorium on nuclear testing and dismissed a suggestion by the editor of a state television channel that Moscow should detonate a thermonuclear device in Siberia as a warning to the West.

President Vladimir Putin, who governs the largest nuclear power in the worldhas repeatedly reprimanded West that any attack against Russia could provoke a nuclear response.

The Soviet Union’s last nuclear test took place in 1990. The United States’ last nuclear test took place in 1992, and France and China conducted their last nuclear tests in 1996, according to the United Nations.

The Kremlin said it had not abandoned the moratorium when asked about comments by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of state broadcaster RT, who suggested Russia should detonate a nuclear bomb over Siberia.

“At the moment, we have not abandoned the nuclear testing abandonment regime,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“I don’t think such discussions are possible now from an official point of view,” Peskov said, adding that Simonyan’s words do not “always” reflect Moscow’s official position.

Simonyan said the Ukraine crisis was moving towards a nuclear ultimatum and the West would not stop until Russia sent a nuclear message.

“A nuclear ultimatum is increasingly imminent and increasingly impossible to avoid,” Simonyan said. “They won’t back down unless it’s painful for them.”

He joked that such an explosion would render electronic devices useless and therefore make it easier for him to explain to his children why they were not allowed devices like iPads.

Russian state television’s nuclear rhetoric became particularly pronounced late last year, but was more subdued during the first half of this year.

NUCLEAR AGE

The United States ushered in the nuclear age in July 1945 with the testing of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July 1945, and then dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, end of World War II.

The Soviet Union shocked the West by detonating its first nuclear bomb just four years later, in August 1949.

In the five decades between 1945 and the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, more than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out, 1,032 of them by the United States and 715 by the Soviet Union, according to The United Nations.

Putin suspended his participation in the New START treatyRussia’s last major arms control treaty with Washington.

He also warned that if the United States conducted nuclear tests again, Russia would resume them as well.

He The New York Times reported on Monday that satellite images and aviation data suggested that Russia may be preparing to test an experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile, or may have recently tested one.

“I don’t know where the NYT journalists got this from,” Peskov said of the Kremlin. “Apparently, satellite images need to be studied in more detail.”

“The New York Times stands by our reporting,” a spokesperson for the newspaper said in an emailed statement.

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