Just hours after Putin’s comments, Russia’s top lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, would swiftly consider if Russia’s ratification of the treaty needed to be revoked.
“At the next meeting of the State Duma Council, we will definitely discuss the issue of revoking the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty,” Volodin said.
Putin’s comments, followed by Volodin’s, indicate that Russia is seriously considering revoking ratification of the treaty, which bans nuclear detonations by everyone, everywhere.
The resumption of nuclear tests by Russia, the United States or China could signal the beginning of a new nuclear arms race between the great powers that stopped nuclear testing after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
For some scientists and campaigners, the abundance of nuclear bomb tests during the Cold War signaled the folly of nuclear detonation maneuvers that could ultimately destroy humanity and contaminate the planet for hundreds of thousands of years.