Russia's Vladimir Putin ordered top officials on Wednesday to submit plans for the possible resumption of nuclear testing, a direct response to President Donald Trump's surprise instruction for the United States to begin testing for the first time in more than 30 years.
In a televised meeting with his Security Council in Moscow, Putin said that he had warned the U.S. and others that if they "conduct such tests, Russia would also be required to take appropriate retaliatory measures."
He told the foreign and defense ministries "to do everything possible to gather additional information on this matter, analyze it in the Security Council, and submit coordinated proposals on the possible commencement of preparations for nuclear weapons testing.”
Several of Putin's top officials backed the need for resumed tests.
“We must respond appropriately to Washington’s actions,” Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said, urging his government “to begin preparations for full-scale nuclear testing immediately.”
Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia's chief of the general staff, added, "If we do not take appropriate measures now, we will miss the opportunity to respond promptly to the United States' actions, since preparation for nuclear tests, depending on their type, takes several months to several years."
Russian Ambassador in Washington Alexander Darchiev had sent a telegram to U.S. officials "to clarify these controversial statements by U.S. President Donald Trump," Sergey Naryshkin, chief of Russia's foreign intelligence service, told the council.
But "representatives from both the White House and the U.S. State Department declined to comment," he added, "stating that they would report the information to their superiors and contact the Russian side if it will be deemed necessary to provide clarification."
The Security Council meeting was supposed to focus on transport security. However, Speaker of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin asked members to first comment on Washington's announcement of renewed nuclear tests.
NBC News has contacted the Pentagon and State Department for comment.
The move comes after Trump announced last week that he had instructed the Defense Department to “immediately” start testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with other nations.
The U.S. has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992, China and France last did so in 1996 and the Soviet Union in 1990.
Trump's order was widely criticized by nuclear scientists and nonproliferation experts, who said that Washington had little to gain from live drills, which would likely only embolden Moscow and Beijing.
The U.S. has only one viable testing location, the former Nevada Nuclear Test Site near Las Vegas, which would take at least two years to get up and running, experts said.
There has been little clarity from Trump and his team.
Asked whether he planned to resume actual explosive nuclear tests underground, the president told reporters Friday, "You'll find out very soon, but we're going to do some testing, yeah."
He added: "Other countries do it. If they're going to do it, we're going to do it."
On Sunday, his energy secretary, Chris Wright, told Fox News that "these will be nonnuclear explosions" that would develop "sophisticated systems so that our replacement nuclear weapons are even better than the ones they were before.”
Given the seemingly conflicting public statements from officials in Washington, Russia was "not entirely clear about the United States’ future actions and steps regarding the conduct or nonconduct of nuclear weapons tests," Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu told the meeting.
For his part, Putin has often rattled the nuclear saber since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He has warned Western nations not to intervene in the conflict, suggesting he would not be afraid to use Moscow's arsenals were they to do so.
Last month, he said that Russia had conducted the first hourslong test of a nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable cruise missile capable of evading U.S. missile defenses. In response, Trump said he had a nuclear submarine “right off their shores.”
According to the Norwegian government, the missile, the the Burevestnik, was launched from Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago off the northern coast of Russia. Belousov referred to this site again on Wednesday.
"The readiness of the forces and assets at the central test site on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago allows for" nuclear tests to be implemented "within a short timeframe," he said.
