This Wednesday, October 25, Russia carried out test firings of ballistic missiles aimed at preparing its forces for a “massive nuclear strike” in response, as it prepares to leave the treaty banning nuclear tests.
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Images broadcast by the Russian Defense Ministry on Telegram show a missile taking off in a halo of light and a bomber taking off from a tarmac. Under the supervision of Vladimir Putin, Russia carried out exercises on Wednesday that involved the firing of an Iars intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in the northwest and a Sineva ballistic missile from a sub -sailor in the Barents Sea.
Long-range Tu-95MS aircraft also fired cruise missiles, which have a shorter range and were sometimes used in strikes in Ukraine. A short extract provided by Russian public television shows Vladimir Putin listening to the report from his Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and that of Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov after these maneuvers.
Sergei Shoigu explained in his report that these maneuvers were aimed at simulating “ launch of a massive nuclear strike by strategic offensive forces in response to an enemy nuclear strike “. Russian nuclear doctrine provides for recourse “ strictly defensive “with atomic weapons, in the event of an attack on Russia with weapons of mass destruction or in the event of aggression with conventional weapons” threatening the very existence of the state “.
Fear of an intensification of the arms race
These exercises are made public on the same day that the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament, approved the revocation of the ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Ticen). The senators voted for the text unanimously by 156 votes, thus paving the way for its promulgation by Vladimir Putin. There is little doubt about this, the Russian president having been at the origin of this measure. For Moscow, the abandonment of this treaty aims to “ restore parity »strategic with the United States, which never ratified it.
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This revocation raises fears of an intensification of the arms race. Russia has not carried out such tests since the breakup of the USSR. The last, during the time of the Soviet Union, dates back to 1990 and the last from the United States to 1992. Vladimir Putin nevertheless affirmed at the beginning of October that he did not know immediately whether his country was going to resume nuclear tests.
Russia has already abandoned several nuclear disarmament treaties in recent years, including the important New Start agreement with the United States. In the summer of 2023, it also deployed tactical nuclear weapons, less powerful than the warheads of strategic vectors, in Belarus, its closest ally and a neighbor of the European Union.
Russia, heir to Soviet nuclear power, and the United States between them hold nearly 90% of all nuclear weapons on the planet. Vladimir Putin, who in recent years has praised the new Russian weapons developed, capable according to him of piercing existing anti-missile shields, assured that Russia was in the process of completing tests of two of them: the Bourevestnik and Sarmat.
(With AFP)