The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency amped up criticism of Russia’s nuclear weapons activities last week, saying the nation at some point “has conducted nuclear weapons tests that have created nuclear yield.”
That is a step beyond what agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley told reporters and the public in May at the Hudson Institute in Washington: that Russia “probably is not” adhering to the provisions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that forbid nuclear weapon tests that produce a nuclear yield.
Russia has ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which has not yet entered into force pending ratification by the United States and seven other “Annex 2” states. Still Washington since the early 1990s has observed a self-imposed ban on yield testing. The U.S. limits its stockpile stewardship to explosive subcritical tests carried out in containment vessels.
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s statement did not say when, where, or how Russia produced a nuclear yield.
“The U.S. government, including the Intelligence Community, has assessed that Russia has conducted nuclear weapons tests that have created nuclear yield,” the agency said.
Nuclear disarmament advocates dismissed Ashley’s initial claims at the Hudson Institute as a baseless repetition of old worries that Moscow was flouting the treaty.
Russian Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov, representative for Moscow’s mission to Vienna, on Twitter called the Defense Intelligence Agency’s latest statement “fake news.”
