Category Archives: Nuclear weapons

How might Russia respond to UK and US letting Ukraine hit it with their missiles?

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Moscow has rattled its nuclear sabres, but experts say an increase in hybrid, ‘grey zone’ warfare is more likely

Moscow has threatened to retaliate for the decision taken by the US and the UK to allow their long-range missiles to be used in strikes inside Russian territory, and warned that nothing is off the table. Earlier this week, the Kremlin announced a formal change in its nuclear doctrine which specifically envisages a possible nuclear response to Nato-assisted strikes on Russian soil. So, how far is Vladimir Putin prepared to go?

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Iran has offered to keep uranium below purity levels for a bomb, IAEA confirms

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UN inspectorate chief calls Tehran’s move a ‘concrete step in the right direction’, amid threat of restored sanctions

Iran has offered to keep its stock of uranium enriched up to 60% – below the purity levels required to make a nuclear bomb – the head of the UN nuclear inspectorate, Rafael Grossi, has confirmed amid the threat of restored European sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear activities.

“I think this is … a concrete step in the right direction. We have a fact which has been verified by us. It is the first time Iran has agreed to take a different path,” Grossi said in Vienna on Tuesday.

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Ukraine fires US-made Atacms missiles into Russia after ban lifted by Biden

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First such use of missiles came hours after Vladimir Putin lowered Moscow’s threshold for using nuclear weapons

Ukraine has fired US-made long-range missiles into Russia for the first time since the Biden administration lifted restrictions on their use, drawing a warning from Moscow that it would respond “accordingly”.

Russia’s defence ministry said Ukraine launched six US-made Atacms missiles targeting the south-western Bryansk region overnight. Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelenskyy did not directly confirm the Bryansk attack but said: “We now have Atacms, Ukrainian long-range capabilities, and we will use them.”

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North Korea tells UN it is speeding up nuclear weapons programme

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Pyongyang’s envoy to the United Nations says buildup is to counter threat from ‘hostile nuclear weapons states’

North Korea’s UN envoy has said Pyongyang will accelerate a buildup of its nuclear weapons programme just days after it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time this year at a moment of rising tensions with the west.

Kim Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, said during a security council meeting on Monday that Pyongyang would accelerate the programme to “counter any threat presented by hostile nuclear weapons states”.

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Tucker Carlson credits demons for the invention of nuclear technology

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Ex-Fox News host makes bizarre claim on Steve Bannon’s podcast, days after saying a demon attacked him in his sleep

Demons that Tucker Carlson claimed attacked him as he slept were also responsible for the invention of nuclear technology, the conservative former Fox News host said on Monday in another bizarre contention.

Carlson made the claim on the War Room podcast hosted by his fellow rightwing extremist Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser in the Trump administration who was released from prison last week after serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.

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UK says it voted against UN nuclear war panel because consequences already known

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Foreign Office argues scientific study into modern effects of nuclear war not needed

The UK was one of three countries to vote against creating a UN scientific panel on the effects of nuclear war because, the Foreign Office argued, the “devastating consequences” of such a conflict are already well known without the need for a new study.

The UK, France and Russia were the only countries to vote on Friday night against a UN general assembly committee resolution drafted by Ireland and New Zealand to set up an international scientific inquiry to take a fresh look at the multifaceted impact of nuclear weapons use.

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Nobel peace prize awarded to Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group

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Nihon Hidakanyo receives accolade for campaign to rid world of nuclear weapons by ‘describing the indescribable’

Survivors of the atomic bombings of Japan almost eight decades ago have won the Nobel peace prize for their campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations – commonly known as Nihon Hidankyo – received the accolade one year before the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and at a time of growing concern about the possible use of nuclear weapons.

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Top Russia diplomat warns west not to fight ‘nuclear power’ in UN speech

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Sergei Lavrov accuses west of using Ukraine ‘to defeat’ Russia days after Putin shifts Moscow’s nuclear posture

Russia’s top diplomat warned on Saturday against “trying to fight to victory with a nuclear power”, delivering a UN general assembly speech packed with condemnations of what Russia sees as western machinations in Ukraine and elsewhere – including inside the United Nations itself.

Three days after Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, aired a shift in his country’s nuclear doctrine, his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the west of using Ukraine – which Russia invaded in February 2022 – as a tool to try “to defeat” Moscow strategically, and “preparing Europe for it to also throw itself into this suicidal escapade”.

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Vladimir Putin warns west he will consider using nuclear weapons

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Comments are strongest yet against allowing Ukraine to launch long-range missiles into Russian territory

Vladimir Putin has escalated his nuclear rhetoric, telling a group of senior officials that Russia would consider using nuclear weapons if it was attacked by any state with conventional weapons.

His remarks on Wednesday came during a meeting with Russia’s powerful security council where he also announced changes to the country’s nuclear doctrine.

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China test launches intercontinental ballistic missile for first time in decades

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The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched into ‘high seas’ of the Pacific Ocean

China has announced the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile into the “high seas” of the Pacific Ocean, flying over the northern point of the Philippines in what is believed to be the first such test since the early 1980s.

The launch of the missile, which the defence ministry said was carrying a dummy warhead, comes at a time of growing international scrutiny of the country’s nuclear arsenal, and prompted statements of concern from several nations.

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Russia’s new Sarmat ballistic missile ‘blows up during test launch’

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Analysis of satellite images show 60-metre crater at silo suggesting a ‘catastrophic failure’ after ignition

Russia’s Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile – known in the west as Satan II – appears to have suffered a “catastrophic failure” during a test launch, according to analysis of satellite images.

The images captured by Maxar on 21 September show a crater about 60 metres (200 feet) wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. They reveal extensive damage that was not visible in pictures taken earlier in the month.

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Alarm in UK and US over possible Iran-Russia nuclear deal

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US president Joe Biden and British PM Keir Starmer fear secret arms link-up amid talks in Washington over Ukraine

Britain and the US have raised fears that Russia has shared nuclear secrets with Iran in return for Tehran supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to bomb Ukraine.

During their summit in Washington DC on Friday, Keir Starmer and US president Joe Biden acknowledged that the two countries were tightening military cooperation at a time when Iran is in the process of enriching enough uranium to complete its long-held goal to build a nuclear bomb.

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US arms advantage over Russia and China threatens stability, experts warn

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Academics say vulnerability of the two countries’ nuclear launch sites makes dangerous mistakes more likely

The US and its allies are capable of threatening and destroying all of Russia and China’s nuclear launch sites with conventional weapons, creating what two experts describe as a potentially unstable geopolitical situation.

Prof Dan Plesch and Manuel Galileo, from Soas University of London, describe a “quiet revolution in military affairs” reflecting increased US military power relative to Moscow and Beijing, particularly in missile technology.

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Plutonium levels near US atomic site in Los Alamos similar to Chornobyl, study finds

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Much of the land near the atomic bomb’s birthplace was converted to recreational areas, but toxic waste remains

Soil, plants and water along popular recreation spots near Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, are contaminated with “extreme concentrations” of plutonium, a new study has found, but calls for the federal government to act have been dismissed.

Michael Ketterer, a Northern Arizona University scientist and lead researcher on the project, said the plutonium levels in and around New Mexico’s Acid Canyon were among the highest he had ever seen in a publicly accessible area in the US during his decades-long career – comparable to what is found in Ukraine at the site of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

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US ambassador to skip Nagasaki bomb commemoration over Israeli exclusion

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City’s mayor says Israel not invited because of risk of protests at event honouring victims of 1945 nuclear blast

The US ambassador to Japan will skip this year’s memorial service for the nuclear attack on Nagasaki because Israel has not been invited, the embassy has said.

Rahm Emanuel would not attend the event on Friday because it had been “politicised” by Nagasaki’s decision not to invite Israel, the embassy said. Instead, he would honour the victims of the Nagasaki bombing at a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo and a lower-ranked US official would attend the Nagasaki event, it said.

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Labour rejects JD Vance ‘first Islamist country with nuclear weapons’ remarks

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Deputy PM Angela Rayner says she does not recognise Donald Trump running mate’s ‘characterisation’ of Britain

Senior Labour figures have rejected comments by Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, that the UK could become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” under the party.

They were reacting to comments that were made by Vance, a junior senator for the state of Ohio who has been announced as Trump’s running mate, at a conference for US conservatives.

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US imposes fresh sanctions on Iran over apparent nuclear escalations

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Blinken says Tehran has expanded uranium enrichment project ‘in ways that have no credible peaceful purpose’

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced fresh sanctions against Iran’s petroleum sector in response to what he described as an expansion of the country’s nuclear programme which has provoked renewed fears that it is preparing to build an atomic bomb.

The embargoes – on three unnamed entities involved in the transport of Iranian petroleum or petrochemical products – were announced amid a chorus of warnings of a renewed conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iran’s proxy Hezbollah, the powerful Shia group that dominates Lebanon.

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Einstein letter warning FDR of threat of Nazi nuclear bomb set to fetch $4m

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Two-page letter written by physicist and fellow scientist, for sale at Christie’s, urged US government to invest in research

A two-page letter written by Albert Einstein warning Franklin D Roosevelt – then the president of the US – that Nazi Germany might harness nuclear research to invent an atomic bomb is going up for sale at Christie’s auctioneers in September with an estimate value of $4m.

Einstein’s letter – one of two the theoretical physicist drafted in a cabin on the north shore of New York’s Long Island with a fellow scientist, Leo Szilard – warned that the German government was actively supporting nuclear research and could make “extremely powerful bombs” like the kind that were eventually deployed by the US at the end of the second world war.

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‘A return to the cold war’: Putin and Kim have joined forces as global delinquents | Andrew Roth

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The defiant Russia-North Korea friendship pact raises big questions for Washington and Seoul – but also for Beijing

A quarter of a century ago, Vladimir Putin flew to Pyongyang to sign a ­“friendship treaty” with Kim Jong-il that helped revive Russia’s relations with North Korea without obliging the two sides to come to each other’s aid in case of a military attack.

With his visit last week, Putin has in effect gone further into the past, signing a deal with Kim Jong-un reminiscent of the 1961 security pact that existed under the Soviet Union during the cold war. But today Russia is engaged in a hot war in Ukraine that Putin has made his ­foreign policy priority, and a nuclear North Korea has become a crucial lifeline of munitions for his military.

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Former Trump national security adviser urges resumption of nuclear testing

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Robert O’Brien says US should abandon moratorium but experts say proposal would hasten global nuclear arms race

Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, widely tipped to play a leading role in a second Trump presidency, has advocated the resumption of nuclear testing, and the possible renewed production of plutonium and weapons-grade uranium.

Arms control experts said O’Brien’s proposals would accelerate the global nuclear arms race and backfire in terms of US security, handing greater advantages to Russia and China.

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