Russia is ‘fully ready’ to detonate a nuclear bomb in the Arctic at ‘any moment’, it was revealed Tuesday as Vladimir Putin presses on with drills unseen since the Cold War.
The director of an old Soviet test site first in the Novaya Zelmlya archipelago insisted that testing facilities are ready and can be used immediately ‘if the order is given’.
Rear Admiral Andrei Sinitsyn said: ‘The test site is ready to resume full-scale testing activities… The laboratory and testing facilities are ready. The personnel are ready.’
WHAT WAS SAID
Sinitsyn claimed ‘foreign intelligence’ was monitoring the site, ‘likely sign of a concern over nuclear tests’, speaking to the state-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
‘We are constantly ready to repel all types of threats, including the penetration of sabotage and reconnaissance groups onto the island,’ he said.
Mr Sinitsyn said that ‘the ‘Central Test Site of the Russian Federation’ would be used for ‘conducting and providing non-nuclear explosive experiments’.
He said the tests were ‘in the interests of state security’.
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ABOUT THE NUCLEAR TESTING
But pressed on whether the site was ready to ‘if necessary, resume nuclear testing’, he said: ‘The testing ground is ready to resume full-scale testing activities. Ready in full.’
If an order is given by Vladimir Putin, a test may still go ahead.
The site has not been used for nuclear testing since October 1990, after which the ailing USSR ruled out future tests, maintained by Russia.
