The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency amped up criticism of Russia’s nuclear stockpile work last week, saying in a statement that 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 Test Ban Treaty, which has not yet entered into force. The U.S. has not ratified the accord, although Washington observes 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 Defense Intelligence Agency stated last week.
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.”
