Russia and weapons of mass destruction.html



Russia
First nuclear weapon test	August 29, 1949
First fusion weapon test	November 22, 1955
Largest yield test	50 Mt (October 30, 1961)
Peak stockpile	41,000 warheads (1991)
Current stockpile	6,681 total (est.)
NPT signatory	Yes (1968, one of five recognized powers)

Russia possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the world. Russia declared an arsenal of 40,000 tons of chemical weapons in 1997 and is said to have had around 6,681 nuclear weapons stockpiled in 2005, making its stockpile the largest in the world. The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol on January 22, 1975 with reservations. The reservations were later dropped on January 18, 2001.

Nuclear weapons

Main article: Soviet atomic bomb project

Nuclear weapons
History of nuclear weapons Nuclear warfare Nuclear arms race Nuclear weapon design Nuclear testing Effects of nuclear explosions Delivery systems Nuclear espionage Proliferation / Arsenals
Nuclear-armed states
US · Russia · UK · France PR China · India · Israel Pakistan · North Korea
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Nuclear arsenal of Russia

Russia was estimated to have around 6,681 active strategic nuclear warheads in its arsenal.¹ Russia also has a large but unknown number of tactical nuclear weapons [1]. Strategic nuclear forces of Russia include:¹

1. Land based Strategic Rocket Forces: 489 missiles carrying up to 1,788 warheads; they employ immobile (silos), like SS-18 Satan, and mobile delivery systems, like SS-27 Topol M.
2. Sea based Strategic Fleet: 12 submarines carrying up to 609 warheads; they employ delivery systems like

Biological weapons

Main article: Soviet program of biological weapons

Weapons of mass destruction

By type

Biological Chemical Nuclear Radiological

By country

Albania Algeria Argentina Australia Brazil Bulgaria Canada PR China France Germany India Iran Iraq Israel Japan Netherlands North Korea Pakistan Poland Romania Russia Saudi Arabia South Africa Syria Taiwan (ROC) United Kingdom United States

List of treaties

v • d • e

Soviet program of biological weapons has been initially developed by the Soviet Ministry of Defense (between 1945 and 1973).²

Soviet Union signed the Biological Weapons Convention on April 10, 1972 and ratified the treaty on March 26, 1975. Since then, the program of Biological weapons was run primarily by the "civilian" Biopreparat agency, although it also included numerous facilities run by the Soviet Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Chemical Industry, Ministry of Health, and Soviet Academy of Sciences.²

According to Ken Alibek, who was deputy-director of Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons agency, and who defected to the USA in 1992, weapons were developed in labs in isolated areas of the Soviet Union including mobilization facilities at Omutininsk, Penza and Pokrov and research facilities at Moscow, Stirzhi and Vladimir. These weapons were tested at several facilities most often at "Rebirth Island" (Vozrozhdeniya) in the Aral Sea by firing the weapons into the air above monkeys tied to posts, the monkeys would then be monitored to determine the effects.²

In 1993, the story about the Sverdlovsk anthrax leak was published in Russia. The incident occurred when spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a military facility in the city of Sverdlovsk (formerly, and now again, Yekaterinburg) 900 miles east of Moscow on April 2, 1979. The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in 94 people becoming infected, 64 of whom died over a period of six weeks.²

Chemical weapons

Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on January 13, 1993 and ratified it on November 5, 1997. Russia declared an arsenal of 40,000 tons of chemical weapons in 1997.

Russia met its treaty obligations by destroying 1% of its chemical agents by the Chemical Weapons Convention's 2002 deadline [2], but requested technical and financial assistance and extensions on the deadlines of 2004 and 2007 due to the environmental challenges of chemical disposal. This extension procedure spelled out in the treaty has been utilized by other countries, including the United States.

Russia has built three chemical weapons destruction plants: at Gorny, at Kambarka, and at the Maradykovsky complex. Four more facilities are still under construction at other locations. Lieutenant General Valery Kapashin reaffirmed in 2007 that Russia would fulfill its obligations under the CWC to destroy all of its chemical weapon stockpiles by 2012;³ however, U.S. analyses have claimed that neither Russia nor the U.S. will finish operations by that date.⁴ Russia's program is financed by Russian funding as well as money from the U.S. and other countries.

See also

• Father of all bombs
• United States and weapons of mass destruction

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Russia's nuclear capabilities by Adrian Blomfield, Telegraph, 5 June 2007
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Alibek, K. and S. Handelman. Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World – Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran it. Delta (2000) ISBN 0-385-33496-6
3. ^ RIA Novosti - Russia - Russia will destroy only its own chemical weapons - general
4. ^ http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d031031.pdf

External links

• Abolishing Weapons of Mass Destruction: Addressing Cold War and Other Wartime Legacies in the Twenty-First Century By Mikhail S. Gorbachev
• Russia's Nuclear Policy in the 21st Century Environment - analysis by Dmitri Trenin, IFRI Proliferation Papers n°13, 2005
• Nuclear Threat Initiative on Russia by National Journal
• UK statement on the chemical weapons convention - Link is not available now
• 1999 Nuclear stockpile estimate
• Nuclear Notebook: Russian nuclear forces, 2006, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2006.
• Nuclear Files.org Current information on nuclear stockpiles in Russia
• Chemical Weapons in Russia: History, Ecology, Politics by Lev Fedorov, Moscow, Center of Ecological Policy of Russia, 27 July 1994