Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with his Security Council to hear a report-back from Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on his trip to China, where he also met with China’s President Xi Jinping. The first item on the agenda, however, was how to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s statements about beginning nuclear testing. Both Defense Minister Andrei Belousov and Army Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov pointed to the U.S. violations of the arms control treaties and the signals given about nuclear testing coming from both Trump himself and U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Belousov pointed to the U.S. withdrawal from the treaties, the creation of the Golden Dome, the forced modernization of the nuclear arsenal, the planned deployment of the hypersonic “Dark Eagle,” and the failure of the Russian diplomats in the U.S. to get clarification on understanding Trump’s statements, meant that Russia must prepare the basis for conducting its own nuclear testing.
Gerasimov pointed to the failure of the U.S. to give a concrete response to Putin’s proposal to adhere to the strictures of the START Treaty one year after it goes out in February 2026. Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Service, however, asked for more time to determine what the U.S. really intends before taking any definitive action. “I agree that the situation has to be taken seriously,” Bortnikov said, “but there are still many questions raised before we make a decision, I believe.”
Putin responded saying that Russia has always adhered to the Test Ban Treaty and has no plans to abandon those obligations, but that if the U.S. or others resumed testing, Russia should take adequate measures in response. He assigned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, intelligence services and other agencies to collect more information, analyze it, and submit proposals through the Security Council on the possible resumption of nuclear weapons testing.
In a posting the same day, Dmitry Medvedev, also underlined the issue in his own inimitable way: “No one knows what Trump meant about ‘nuclear testing’ (he probably doesn’t himself). But he’s the president of the United States. And the consequences of such words are inescapable: Russia will be forced to assess the expediency of conducting full-fledged nuclear tests itself.”
