The director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warned Thursday that the United States is "trying to bring imbalance to the system of international security" in the nuclear sphere, according to state news agency Tass.
Speaking at a conference commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union's first nuclear bomb test, Sergey Naryshkin described the United States as a "Western totalitarian-liberal regime" that believes in its "impunity" while imposing its will on other countries and the nuclear sphere, Tass said.
Naryshkin, who has served as the SVR's head since 2016, called out Washington's withdrawal from nuclear agreements, including the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action restricting Iran's nuclear program to peaceful purposes. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPA agreement in 2018.
Naryshkin said that the U.S. "subcritical experiment" on May 14 "is a cause for concern." The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration said in May that the experiment was executed within the limits of nuclear explosive testing 1,000 feet below the ground at a facility in Nevada.
Naryshkin said, "The experiment wasn't a full-fledged nuclear test and formally, it violates neither the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty nor the U.S. moratorium on nuclear tests," which bans nuclear explosive testing.
"However, it clearly indicates that the U.S. wants to show off that very 'nuclear sledgehammer' that U.S. President Harry Truman had sought to intimidate the Soviet Union with in 1945," he said.
The U.S. is the only nation to have used such weapons in warfare, when President Truman ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which ended World War II. During the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia engaged in a fierce nuclear arms race.
In his speech, Naryshkin said that U.S. nuclear policy and intimidation "didn't work back then and it won't work now," adding that the lessons of World War II and the Cold War "are quickly forgotten by those who find it beneficial."
Newsweek reached out via email to the Russian government and the U.S. State Department for comment on Thursday.
Since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which brought a war that has lasted over two and a half years, global tensions and threats of nuclear warfare have escalated.
It is difficult to specify the number of global nuclear arsenals. A 2024 report by the Federation of American Scientists estimates that Russia has 5,580 nuclear warheads, the U.S. has 5,044, and China has 500. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says Russia and the U.S. possess 4,380 and 3,708, respectively. The U.S. government said in September 2023 that the nation had 3,748 nuclear warheads.
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