Russia has warned it “rules out nothing” regarding nuclear testing in response to Donald Trump’s “radical” position on the issue during his first term as president.
Deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees arms control, warned the United States that its nuclear arsenal is intended to “sober up” countries on the “brink of direct armed conflict” with Russia.
Russia, the US and China are all undertaking major modernisations of their nuclear weapons just as the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of the Cold War era between the Soviet Union and the US is starting to fall apart.
Mr Ryabkov told the Kommersant newspaper: “The international situation is extremely difficult at the moment, the American policy in its various aspects is extremely hostile to us today.
“So the optionality of our actions in the interests of ensuring security and the complex of possible measures and actions to realise this – and to send politically appropriate signals, in addition to what practitioners are considering – does not rule anything out.”
He added: “The reality of the role of nuclear weapons in Russian security policy is, in any case, unchanged: this instrument, until the moment of its hypothetical use in extreme circumstances of self-defence, is intended to admonish, if you will, sober up those who decide to encroach on the fundamental interests of our state, balancing, as is happening now, on the brink of a direct open armed conflict with us.”
During Mr Trump’s first 2017 to 2021 term as president, his administration discussed whether to conduct the first US nuclear test since 1992.
Post-Soviet Russia has not carried out a nuclear test, and the Soviet Union last tested in 1990. President Vladimir Putin has previously said Russia would consider testing a nuclear weapon if the US did.
Mr Putin formally revoked Russia’s ratification of the CTBT in 2023, bringing his country into line with the US. The CTBT was signed by Russia in 1996 and ratified in 2000. The US signed the treaty in 1996 but has not ratified it.
The warning came after the president-elect made clear his intentions to purchase Greenland again in a rambling Christmas Day message.
Mr Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social: “For purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
But the territory’s prime minister, Múte Egede, hit back on Monday: “Greenland is ours.”
Mr Egede insisted Greenland belonged to its inhabitants, who must not lose their “long struggle for freedom”, adding: “We are not for sale and will never be for sale.”
Hours later Denmark announced it would boost its defence spending in Greenland to at least €1.3 billion, with Danish defence minister Troels Lund Poulsen insisting the timing was merely an “irony of fate”.
Before winning the election, Mr Trump appeared on Fox News to offer his nihilistic impressions of what a nuclear apocalypse would look like.
He said: “I love this country. I don’t want to see this country get into a nuclear war and be so badly damaged. What we say won’t matter. This won’t matter. This place won’t matter, nothing will matter because practically nothing is going to be here anymore.
“The level of power, the level of power with the weapons and weaponry – that’s real weaponry, that’s worse than the weaponry we were talking about a little while ago – this is the ultimate… This is obliteration. Maybe world obliteration.”
Mr Trump concluded: “Tomorrow, we could have a war that will be so devastating that you could never recover from it. Nobody can. The whole world won’t be able to recover from it. And [Mr Biden’s] talking about… in 400 years from now, the oceans will rise by an eighth of an inch.”
