By Galina Korol | 2025-11-24

The Kremlin is reviving the choreography of a Cold War showdown, but this time the drama may outstrip the firepower behind it.

By floating the prospect of renewed nuclear testing at Novaya Zemlya, Russian leaders are trying to summon the specter of 1962 -- when Nikita Khrushchev used the threat of a nuclear strike to rattle Washington.

Analysts say today's effort looks less like strategic brinkmanship and more like an attempt to mask Russia’s shrinking capabilities.

At a November 5 meeting of Russia's Security Council, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov proposed preparing for full-scale nuclear tests at the Arctic archipelago.

President Vladimir Putin ordered top military officials to draft recommendations and assess conditions on the ground. Belousov said the site was "ready to accept work as soon as possible."

Russian officials cast the move as a response to a post by US President Donald Trump on October 30 on Truth Social, in which he wrote that he had instructed the Department of War to begin nuclear weapons testing "on an equal basis" with other countries.

Expert timeline

News outlets quickly seized on the Kremlin's statements, raising questions about how soon Russia could stage an underground nuclear blast -- and whether it can do so at all. Earlier this month, the War Zone surveyed nuclear experts, who offered widely different estimates.

Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists said Russia could produce a quick, symbolic explosion by placing a warhead in an existing tunnel and sealing it, though he noted the move would yield no new technical data.

He said full-scale testing with instruments and sensors "would probably take several months, possibly six-plus," because crews would need to dig or restore a tunnel, lay cables and install monitoring equipment.

Jon B. Wolfsthal, director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists, said Novaya Zemlya's location in the Arctic Circle limits work to the summer or early fall, making any test unlikely before next year. He said Russia would not need a megaton blast; a 1- to 20-kiloton device would suffice to test thermonuclear components.

As experts debate timelines, analysts also question whether Russia needs to test at all.

Pavel Podvig, who runs the Russian Nuclear Forces project in Geneva, told Kontur that designers appear "completely satisfied" with alternatives such as experiments and modeling.

But Kyiv-based nuclear missile expert Oleksandr Kochetkov compared those methods to "giving medical treatment based on a photo" and said the Kremlin may want to assess the true condition of its arsenal.

He told Kontur that nuclear materials and components degrade under harsh storage conditions, including pressure, temperature swings and aging neutron-flux sources, which act as detonators.

He warned that a failed test, immediately visible to foreign satellites, would expose vulnerabilities Moscow hopes to conceal.

"Russia is afraid of conducting nuclear tests. It doesn't want to show that the emperor has no clothes. It wants to show that it has the nuclear weapons it is scaring people with, not that this is false and that the weapons are not at all in a condition to scare the world with," Kochetkov said.

Military analyst and Ukrainian reservist Col. Oleg Zhdanov told Kontur he doubts Russia can rebuild the infrastructure needed for a nuclear detonation, saying the country "is simply incapable of restoring all the infrastructure to guarantee that it can carry out nuclear explosions, just like it isn't capable of even assembling its own domestic car."

Declining power

Yuri Kostenko, a former Ukrainian environment minister and author of "Ukraine's Nuclear Disarmament: A History," said Russia's nuclear strength has eroded sharply over the past decades.

Speaking on the Vilniy Media PROstir podcast on November 11, he said that during the Soviet era, "there was parity between the Soviet Union and the United States," and deterrence depended on the threat of a devastating retaliatory strike.

Since the USSR's collapse, economic troubles have steadily drained funding from Russia's nuclear triad. Citing Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data, Kostenko said that by 2006, spending had fallen about 40% for strategic aircraft, 60% for intercontinental ballistic missiles and 80% for submarines. He added that in 2011, the United States invested $60 billion in its nuclear forces, compared with Russia's $14.5 billion.

Russia "has lost the ability to deliver a nonreciprocal strike like it could in the Soviet era," Kostenko said, arguing that the United States now holds clear nuclear superiority.

He called Moscow's talk of reviving tests political posturing meant to secure leverage. This rhetoric aims "solely at achieving political goals" and at pressuring the United States and China to give Putin "a third seat at this geopolitical table."