- The diplomat says that the situation is quite difficult.
- He says Russia is considering the option in all its aspects.
- Russia last tested nuclear weapons in 1990.
A senior Russian diplomat has said the possibility of Moscow resuming nuclear weapons testing remains uncertain, due to what he described as hostile US policies.
“This is an issue before us,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the TASS news agency on Saturday when asked if Moscow was considering resuming testing.
“And without giving anything away, let me just say that the situation is quite difficult. It is constantly being examined in all its components and in all its aspects.”
In September, Ryabkov referred to President Vladimir Putin as saying that Russia would not conduct a test as long as the United States refrained from conducting one.
Moscow has not conducted a nuclear weapons test since 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But this month Putin lowered the threshold governing the country's nuclear doctrine in response to what Moscow sees as an escalation by Western countries backing Ukraine in its 33-month war with Russia.
Under the new terms, Russia could consider a nuclear strike in response to a conventional attack against Russia or its ally Belarus that “creates a critical threat to its sovereignty and (or) territorial integrity.”
The changes were prompted by the United States' permission to allow Ukraine to use Western missiles against targets inside Russia.
Russia's test site is located on the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, where the Soviet Union conducted more than 200 nuclear tests.
Putin signed a law last year withdrawing Russia's ratification of the global treaty banning nuclear weapons testing. He said the move sought to align Russia with the United States, which signed but never ratified the treaty.
