MOSCOW: Russia on Friday indicated it was moving swiftly toward revoking ratification for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty after President Vladimir Putin held out the possibility of resuming nuclear testing.
A resumption in nuclear tests by Russia, the United States or both would be profoundly destabilising at a time when tensions between the two countries are greater than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Putin on Thursday said Russia’s nuclear doctrine did not need updating but that he was not yet ready to say whether or not Russia needed to resume nuclear tests.
The Kremlin chief said that Russia should look at revoking ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as the United States had signed it but not ratified.
Just hours after Putin’s words, Russia’s top lawmaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, said the legislature’s bosses would swiftly consider the need to revoke Russia’s ratification for the treaty.
“The situation in the world has changed,” parliament peaker Volodin said. “Washington and Brussels have unleashed a war against our country.”
“At the next meeting of the State Duma Council, we will definitely discuss the issue of revoking the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,” Volodin said.
Putin’s words, followed by Volodin’s, indicate that Russia is almost certain to revoke ratification of the treaty, which bans nuclear explosions by everyone, everywhere.
Russia, which inherited the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, has the world’s biggest store of nuclear warheads.
In the five decades between 1945 and the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, more than 2,000 nuclear tests were carried out, 1,032 of them by the United States and 715 of them by the Soviet Union, according to the United Nations.
The Soviet Union last tested in 1990. The United States last tested in 1992.
Since the CTBT, 10 nuclear tests have taken place. India conducted two in 1998, Pakistan also two in 1998, and North Korea conducted tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 (twice) and 2017, according to the United Nations.
Putin said on Thursday that Russia had successfully tested a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable cruise missile — the Burevestnik — whose capabilities he has called unmatched.
The Burevestnik, whose name translates as “storm petrel,” is a ground-launched, low-flying cruise missile that is not only capable of carrying a nuclear warhead but is also nuclear-powered. Putin first revealed the project in March 2018.
A 2020 report by the United States Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center said that if Russia successfully brought the Burevestnik into service, it would give Moscow a “unique weapon with intercontinental-range capability.”
Russia to move toward revoking ratification of nuclear test ban treaty — speaker
https://arab.news/972ds
Russia to move toward revoking ratification of nuclear test ban treaty — speaker
- Putin held out possibility of resuming nuclear testing
- Russia has the world’s biggest store of nuclear warheads
India plans AI ‘data city’ on staggering scale
- ‘The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius’
NEW DELHI: As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.
“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push.
“And as a nation ... we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he said ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.
Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.
And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data center in the same city.
Visakhapatnam — home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” — is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than cutting-edge technology.
But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.
“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometers wide.
Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 percent of all foreign direct investments” to India in 2025.
“It’s not just about the data centers,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre for major investors.
