Russia and weapons of mass destruction
The Russian Federation is known to possess or have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons. It is one of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and one of the four countries wielding a nuclear triad. It inherited its weapons and treaty obligations from the Soviet Union. Russia has been alleged to violate the Biological Weapons Convention and Chemical Weapons Convention.
, Russia's triad of deployed strategic nuclear weapons includes approximately 1,254 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 992 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 586 cruise missiles or bombs for delivery by Tupolev Tu-160 and Tu-95 bombers. It also possesses the world's largest arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, approximately 1,500. Since 2022, Russia has provided tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.
The Soviet Union carried out 715 nuclear tests from 1949 to 1990, including its first test, its first thermonuclear test in 1955, and the 1961 Tsar Bomba, by far the largest nuclear test at 50 megatons. Russia signed and ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996 but withdrew ratification in 2023.
Russia possesses 5,459 nuclear warheads and 1,718 deployed missiles, each the largest in the world. Russia's predecessor state, the Soviet Union, reached a peak stockpile of about 45,000 nuclear warheads in 1986. The number of weapons Russia may possess is currently controlled by the New START treaty with the United States. The two countries together hold 88% of the world's nuclear weapons.
The Soviet biological weapons program was the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated. It operated from the 1920s and was in contravention of the Biological Weapons Convention from 1975. At its peak, the program employed up to 65,000 people. The 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak revealed the existence of the program. US intelligence assesses Russia maintains an offensive program.
In 1997, Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons, officially declared destroyed in 2017. Russia was accused of using Novichok nerve agent to carry out the 2018 poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and 2020 poisoning of Alexei Navalny. Russian forces admitted their use of CS gas during the Russo-Ukrainian war, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Russia was also accused of using a radiological weapon in the form of polonium in the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
Nuclear weapons
History
Soviet era
Production sites
Three sites in the Russian SFSR and subsequently Russia produced 145 tons of weapons-grade plutonium from 1948 to 2010, with a consistent production peak between 1967 and 1989. Following the Moscow test reactor F-1 in 1946, the Mayak site in Chelyabinsk-40 began construction. The first plutonium production reactor A-1 began operation in 1948, fuelling the RDS-1 test. The Mayak site received nine further reactors were constructed. Of these, four were used for plutonium production, the other six reactors primarily produced tritium for thermonuclear weapons. Plutonium was also produced by five reactors at the Siberian Chemical Combine in Tomsk-7, and three reactors at the Mining and Chemical Combine in Krasnoyarsk-26. The last plutonium production reactor in Russia is believed to have shut down in 2010. Mayak continues to operate two reactors for tritium and industrial radioisotope production.Russian sites also produced 1,250 tons of highly enriched uranium from 1949 to 2010, excluding HEU produced for naval nuclear reactors. Of this, 500 tons was downblended by the Megatons to Megawatts Program, and a further hundred tons were used in production research reactors, nuclear tests, and other downblending programs. Russia is now believed to possess 656 tons between HEU stockpiles and HEU inside weapons themselves. This began with the SU-20 electromagnetic separation plant, but the Soviet project quickly followed the Manhattan Project's gaseous diffusion scheme, constructing the D-1 plant in Sverdlovsk-44, eventually becoming the Ural Electrochemical Combine. The D-1 plant could produce 0.01 million SWU/year. The development of the gas centrifuge and waves of modernizations brought the Ural Electrochemical Combine to 11.9 million SWU/year by 1993. Further enrichment plants were built at the Siberian Chemical Combine, the Zelenogorsk Electrochemical Plant and the Angarsk Electrochemical Combine.
Post-Soviet era
Post-Soviet countries have signed a series of treaties and agreements to settle the legacy of the former Soviet Union multilaterally and bilaterally.At the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet nuclear weapons were deployed in four of the new republics: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. In May 1992, these four states signed the Lisbon Protocol, agreeing to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, with Russia the continuator state to the Soviet Union as a nuclear state, and the other three states joining as non-nuclear states.
Ukraine agreed to give up its weapons to Russia, in exchange for guarantees of Ukrainian territory from Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, known as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. China and France also made statements in support of the memorandum.
Russian invasion of Ukraine
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin placed Strategic Rocket Forces's nuclear deterrence units on high alert, a move heavily condemned internationally. Putin warned that "whoever tries to hinder us in Ukraine would see consequences, you have never seen in your history". According to the former US Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, Putin could potentially turn to nuclear weapons if he perceived an "existential threat" to the Russian state or regime; there has been speculation that he could regard defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat to his regime.According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Nature Food in August 2022, a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, which together hold more than 90% of the world's nuclear weapons, would kill 360 million people directly and more than 5 billion indirectly by starvation during a nuclear winter.
In September 2022, Putin announced the mobilization of Russian forces, and threatened nuclear retaliation against the west if Russia's territorial integrity was threatened.
On February 21, 2023, Putin suspended Russia's participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States, saying that Russia would not allow the US and NATO to inspect its nuclear facilities. On March 25, 2023, Putin announced that Russia would be stationing tactical nuclear operations in Belarus. On June 14, 2023, Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko stated that Belarus had started to take delivery of nuclear weapons in a TV interview with Russian state channel, Russia-1.
On 25 September 2024, Putin warned the West that if attacked with conventional weapons Russia would consider a nuclear retaliation, in an apparent deviation from the no first use doctrine. Putin also warned nuclear powers that if they supported another country's attack on Russia, they would be considered participants in such aggression. Putin has made several implicit nuclear threats since the outbreak of war against Ukraine. Experts say Putin's announcement was aimed at dissuading the United States, the United Kingdom and France from allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied long-range missiles such as the Storm Shadow and ATACMS in strikes against Russia.
Nuclear testing
Soviet nuclear testing
Alleged Russian nuclear testing
The US alleged in 2020 that Russia had carried out "nuclear weapons experiments that have created nuclear yield" between 1996 and 2019, but that it was not aware of such individual experiments in 2019. As Russia is a signatory of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, but the treaty is not in force, the legal status of such an experiment is unclear. The same report accused China's nuclear weapons program of constructing the infrastructure for undetectable low-yield tests, but did not allege any tests had occurred.Arms reduction
The threat of nuclear warfare was a persistent and terrifying threat during the Cold War. At its height, the Soviet Union and United States each mustered tens of thousands of warheads, under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. By the 1980s, both the United States and Soviet Union sought to reduce the number of weapons the other was fielding. This led to the opening of arms reduction talks in 1982.This culminated in the signing of the START I treaty in 1991: the first nuclear arms reduction treaty between the two global powers. This first treaty limited the number of deployed warheads in each nation to 6,000, nearly halving the prior 10,000 to 12,000 being fielded in 1991. The considerable success of START I, combined with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, led to the START II treaty. Russia never ratified the treaty, and it did not go into effect. An attempted START III was attempted but could not get past negotiations.
Instead, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty was passed in 2002, capping warheads at 2,200. The current limitations stem from the New START treaty, ratified in 2010. It limits each side to 1,550 weapons. Nuclear bombers only count as one weapon each, even though they may carry up to 20, so the actual limit on the countries is slightly higher. The treaty is in force through to 2026.
After U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Russia responded by building-up their [|nuclear capabilities], in such a way as to counterbalance U.S. capabilities. Russia decided not to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was adopted on July 7, 2017, by 122 States. Most analysts agree that Russia's nuclear strategy under Putin eventually brought it into violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
According to Russian officials, the American decision to deploy the missile defense system in Europe was a violation of the treaty. U.S. President Donald Trump announced on October 20, 2018 that the U.S. would no longer consider itself bound by the treaty's provisions, raising nuclear tensions between the two powers.
On November 2, 2023, Putin signed a law that withdraws Russia's ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.