Russia is ‘fully ready’ to detonate a nuclear bomb in the Arctic at ‘any moment’, it was revealed today 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.’ 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’. 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.

Images obtained by the Middlebury Institute for International Studies last year showed an uptick in construction at the remote island location, RFE reported at the time.

A comparison of imagery from July 2021 and June 2023 showed large trucks, construction cranes, shipping containers and building supplies brought in to the settlement for its expansion. 

Mr Sinitsyn said the main priorities, and raison d’être for the site, were to deter perceived aggressors through the ‘readiness’ of testing ground infrastructure.

He said this included maintaining a ‘laboratory’ and ‘experimental base’, both of which are ‘ready’.

‘The testing ground has the appropriate staff, weapons, equipment, that is, everything that is necessary for our activities,’ he said.

The warning came days after MP Andrei Kolesnik said Putin should authorise a nuclear bomb test as a warning to the West.

‘We need to carry out a nuclear explosion somewhere, at some testing ground,’ demanded Andrei Kolesnik, who represents the ruling United Russia party.

‘Nuclear tests are currently prohibited in our country.

‘But maybe people should see what all this actually leads to, they should hear.

‘If we lift the moratorium, maybe humanity will think twice.’

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