On August 5, 1963, representatives from three countries—USSR, USA, and the United Kingdom—signed the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water, also known as the “Moscow Treaty.” The treaty came into force on October 10 of the same year and was opened for signature by other countries. To date, 131 states have signed the treaty.
The “Moscow Treaty” served as the foundation for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996, which not all members of the “nuclear club” ratified. As for the Russian Federation, the self-proclaimed “successor of the USSR,” it has today violated all possible nuclear security treaties, once again confirming the famous phrase of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck:
“No agreement with Russia is worth the paper it’s written on.”
Unlike modern Russia, even the main “Evil Empire” of the 20th century, the Soviet Union, was always more restrained and prudent in matters of nuclear blackmail and declarations of nuclear aggression, both towards nuclear states and states with non-nuclear status.
Photo: The “Moscow Treaty” served as the foundation for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty of 1996, which not all members of the “nuclear club” ratified
It is worth starting the list of international treaties violated by Russia with the infamous Budapest Memorandum (Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons), signed on December 5, 1994, and violated 20 years later, in 2014. Under the Budapest Memorandum, Soviet nuclear weapons, one of the largest arsenals in the world located in independent Ukraine, were partially destroyed and partially transferred to Russia. In exchange for renouncing nuclear status, the guarantor countries of the Budapest Memorandum (the same RF, USA, and the United Kingdom) committed not to threaten or use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine and to refrain from economic coercion that could violate Ukraine’s rights. By annexing Crimea in 2014, Russia consistently violated all the points of this agreement, as well as the Treaty on Friendship between Russia and Ukraine of 1997.
Russia, naturally, rejected all accusations from the Ukrainian side, claiming that the annexation of Crimea took place non-violently (the so-called fake referendum on Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation), and the participation of Russian military personnel in the armed conflict in Donbas lacked convincing evidence. Putin and his gang also do not consider their subsequent aggression, including the full-scale military invasion of regular Russian military units into Ukraine in 2022, a violation of the Budapest Memorandum, as they claim that a “new state” emerged in Ukraine during the Euromaidan (2013-2014), with which Russia had not made any agreements. International experts’ arguments that the Russians are deceitfully substituting the concepts of “state” and “government” in their rhetoric were not accepted by the Russians.
Another agreement that ultimately led nowhere was the New START – the Treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, START III. The treaty was signed by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama on April 8, 2010, in Prague and served as another false pretext for Western democracies to consider Russia and its government a reliable party in international relations. The treaty provided for mutual inspections of US and Russian military nuclear facilities for mutual control over nuclear weapons. “This is a very important document on which the situation in the world depends; it is a very significant event,” said US President Barack Obama.
Initially, these inspections were halted during the coronavirus pandemic, and then, after the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia announced that due to sanctions, Russian inspectors could not obtain transit visas to the US. In response to calls from the US State Department not to violate the New START treaty, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in his address to the Federal Assembly in February 2023 that Russia was withdrawing from the treaty.
Today, reading the posts of former President Dmitry Medvedev on social media X or his public addresses, in which he calls for maximum nuclear escalation in Ukraine and Europe, it is hard to believe that this same person once shook hands with Barack Obama and demonstrated peace and cooperation in the field of nuclear security. For example, Medvedev, who, according to addiction experts, drinks heavily, reacted to the permission for Ukraine to strike with Western weapons at Russian border territories, where troops are concentrated for new offensives, as follows:
“The current military conflict with the West is developing according to the worst scenario. There is a constant escalation of the power of NATO weapons being used. Therefore, no one today can rule out the transition of the conflict to its final stage.”
How Moscow violated the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is also well known: in 2023, Putin announced that due to the growing threat at the borders of NATO member countries, he had decided to deploy tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of friendly Belarus, ruled by illegitimate dictator Alexander Lukashenko. In 2024, the construction of special military bases designed to accommodate Russian “Iskanders” with nuclear warheads began.
Returning to the aforementioned “Moscow Treaty” of 1963, it is worth noting that even here, the Russians remained true to their tradition of breaking their promises and ignoring international law and security norms. According to American intelligence, Russia began developing nuclear weapons to deploy them on combat duty in space. The goal of the “New Star Wars,” as this project was dubbed in the media, was to create a nuclear explosion in Earth’s orbit to generate a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP), capable of instantly disabling numerous American and European satellites. Reminding the mad dictator Putin that even the possibility of testing such weapons in space prompted his more reasonable predecessors to conclude the “Moscow Treaty” with the US, and in 1967, an additional agreement banning the placement of any type of nuclear weapons in orbit.
Should we expect Russia to transition from declarative nuclear blackmail to action? Quite possibly, yes. Given Putin’s futile attempts to destroy Ukraine in a genocidal war, for which billions of defense budgets are being spent, peaceful space exploration for scientific purposes is beyond Russia’s capability—both technically and financially. And to destroy what cannot be conquered and seized is a favorite tactic of the Russians; just look at the ruins of “liberated” Ukrainian cities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Source: The Gaze
