Putin signs Russia’s withdrawal
YEAHHH!
from the treaty banning nuclear tests
…oh
My exact thought process
I don’t think they ever ratified the damn thing, so not exactly a big deal legally. Not a great sign for international arms control efforts, but, let’s be honest, they have been moribund since 2000.
They did ratify the thing. They just retracted that ratification.
Out of all the countries that have nuclear weapons, only France and the UK have signed and ratified the thing. The US, China, and Iran have signed it but never ratified it. India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea haven’t even signed it i nthe first place.
So this entire thing is a big nothing burger. Russia is doing simply what China and the US have been doing for decades now.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban_Treaty
I also wonder if the UK and France would have ratified it, if they would still have colonies to test nuclear weapons in. Their homelands are a bit too densely populated with white people.
Google Mururoa, France still has their nuclear testing site in the pacific.
British nuclear testing was done in Nevada on account of the US being okay with it.
The fact that he has to play this card just shows how far Russia has fallen. They’ve proven their military is useless and their economy is crumbling so the only thing left is to say but we have nukes remember! We’re still relevant!
Not like any agreement actually matters to the Russian government anyway…
Not like it matters to the US as former force of “good” in the world either.
Trump is still a realistic option for the next president and from unilaterally quitting out of a greements, to attacking international organisations built by the US itself, we degraded international order and diplomacy by at least 80 years in the past 5 years.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a bill revoking Russia’s ratification of a global nuclear test ban, a move that Moscow said was needed to establish parity with the United States.
Both houses of the Russian parliament voted last month to revoke Moscow’s ratification of the bill.
In addition to the US, it has yet to be ratified by China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, Iran and Egypt.
There are widespread concerns that Russia may resume nuclear tests to try to discourage the West from continuing to offer military support to Ukraine.
Putin has noted that some experts argue for the necessity of conducting nuclear tests but said he had not formed an opinion on the issue.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said last month that Moscow would continue to respect the ban and will only resume nuclear tests if Washington does first.
The original article contains 214 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 33%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I withdrew last year, got a test coming up this weekend. God damn Russia is incompetent.
Devils advocate… fresh nuclear test footage shot in crisp 4k? That would be kinda neat.
The rest of it is shit. I’m trying to find positivity in this hellscape