Category Archives: Nuclear weapons

Putin to sign treaty annexing territories in Ukraine, Kremlin says

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Russian president expected to make speech to members of State Duma at ceremony on Friday

Vladimir Putin will sign treaties on Friday annexing territories in occupied Ukraine, the Kremlin has said, in a major escalation of Russia’s seven-month-old war.

The Russian president is expected to sign into law the annexations of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russia held fake referendums over the last week in order to claim a mandate for the territorial claims.

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Kamala Harris hits out at North Korea’s ‘provocative nuclear rhetoric’ on DMZ visit

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Pyongyang fired ballistic missiles into the sea just hours before US vice-president arrived in Seoul

The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, has condemned North Korea’s “provocative nuclear rhetoric” during a trip to South Korea that included a visit to the heavily armed border dividing the peninsula.

Harris arrived in Seoul on Thursday, hours after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, in a move that underlines Washington’s struggle to rein in the regime’s weapons programme.

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Nuclear attack in Ukraine should spark ‘devastating’ Nato response, says Polish foreign minister

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Zbigniew Rau rules out a nuclear reprisal but says the alliance is sending a clear message to Russia

Poland’s foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, has said Nato’s response to any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine should be non-nuclear but “devastating”.

Speaking on a visit to Washington, Rau said the alliance was in the process of delivering that message to Moscow.

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Russian nuclear sabre-rattling is designed to create fear in the west

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Russian announcements cover up fact that mobilisation will take months to have impact

It was inevitable, after Russia’s sudden military reverse near Kharkiv, that Vladimir Putin would respond, announcing a partial mobilisation of extra troops and a fresh bout of sabre-rattling on nuclear weapons a day after announcing plans to hold high-speed annexation referendums in occupied areas of Ukraine.

The timing, on the morning of Joe Biden’s speech to the UN general assembly aimed at rallying support for Ukraine, demonstrates that, to some extent, Putin’s announcements are about news management – to seize the agenda with tenuous claims that Russia is threatened by Nato “nuclear blackmail”.

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Kim Jong-un says new law guarantees North Korea will never give up nuclear weapons

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Leader says North Korea’s nuclear status is now ‘irreversible’, with military allowed to ‘automatically’ use atomic weapons

North Korea has passed a law enshrining the right to “automatically” use preemptive nuclear strikes to protect itself, a move leader Kim Jong-un said makes its nuclear status “irreversible” and bars any denuclearisation talks, state media has reported.

The move comes as observers say North Korea appears to be preparing to resume nuclear testing for the first time since 2017, after historic summits with then-US president Donald Trump and other world leaders in 2018 failed to persuade Kim to abandon his weapons development.

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FBI found document on foreign nuclear defenses at Mar-a-Lago – report

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Recovered records include material even senior Biden officials were not authorized to view, Washington Post reports

The FBI recovered a document describing a foreign government’s nuclear capabilities during its search of Mar-a-Lago, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The Post, citing unnamed sources, did not identify the foreign government named in the document describing the country’s military defenses.

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Russia suspends US inspections of its nuclear weapons arsenal

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Moscow blames Ukraine war sanctions for preventing mutual inspection of its nuclear arms under New Start treaty

Russia has suspended an arrangement that allowed US and Russian inspectors to visit each other’s nuclear weapons sites under the 2010 New Start treaty, in a new blow to arms control.

Mutual inspections had been suspended as a health precaution since the start of the Covid pandemic, but a foreign ministry statement on Monday added another reason Russia is unwilling to restart them. It argued that US sanctions imposed because of the invasion of Ukraine stopped Russian inspectors travelling to the US.

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Australia urged to prove it is a safe nuclear custodian as Aukus comes under scrutiny at UN

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Non-nuclear state Australia’s handling of nuclear-powered submarines will have to be ‘impeccable’, Australia Institute says

Australia needs to step up in the fight to stop nuclear conflict, and to prove to the world it is a safe nuclear custodian, a new report argues.

The report by the Australia Institute comes ahead of a major global conference that starts on Monday in New York, where Australia’s Aukus submarine deal will come under scrutiny.

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US airman who rescued film of A-bomb horrors is honoured at last

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Cameraman Daniel McGovern copied footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastation to ensure lessons were learned

The photograph shows devastation in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb: a scorched wilderness where there was once a city. At its centre stands a lone man with a camera.

It was 9 September 1945 and Lt Daniel McGovern, a US Army Air Force cameraman, was documenting ground zero, the point directly below the bomb’s detonation four weeks earlier. Few would recognise McGovern, but the vision of apocalypse is familiar from documentary footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.

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Iran accused of making ‘maximalist demands’ in nuclear deal talks

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Talks to save 2015 agreement on brink of collapse as Tehran is also accused of testing missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons

Iran has been accused of making “maximalist demands” in the latest unsuccessful round of talks on reviving the nuclear non-proliferation deal at a grave session of the UN security council in which it was widely acknowledged that the talks – and the whole 2015 deal – were on the brink of collapse.

Iranian and US officials, with the EU acting as mediators, held two days of talks in Doha in a bid to break a months-long impasse, but no progress was made on Iran’s central demand that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from US sanctions and its list of foreign terrorist organisations.

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Australia yet to sign up to treaty banning nuclear weapons but will attend UN meeting as observer

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Exclusive: Anthony Albanese committed Labor to signing the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons while in opposition

Australia will attend – as an observer – a UN meeting of countries that have outlawed nuclear weapons, parties to a treaty Anthony Albanese championed in opposition and committed Labor to ratifying in government.

Government backbencher Susan Templeman’s attendance at the meeting in Vienna on Tuesday comes as a group of 55 former Australian ambassadors and high commissioners have written an open letter to the prime minister urging the government to sign up to the treaty, which outright prohibits the development, testing, production and use of nuclear weapons.

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Global nuclear arsenal set to grow for first time in decades

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Thinktank also says nuclear powers must take immediate action to prevent rise amid heightened risk of weapons’ use

The global nuclear arsenal is expected to grow in the coming years for the first time since the cold war, and the risk of such weapons being used is the greatest in decades, a leading conflict and armaments thinktank says.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and western support for Kyiv has heightened tensions among the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) thinktank said on Monday in a new set of research.

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US warns of ‘stark’ stakes in Taiwan Strait if status quo unilaterally altered

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Defence secretary says US does not support Taiwan independence, which China says would prompt it to take island back

The US has warned of “especially stark” stakes in the Taiwan Strait if the status quo is unilaterally altered, as China reiterated its resolve to take the island back if it declares independence.

Speaking at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore on Saturday, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said Washington does not support Taiwanese independence, and the Joe Biden administration “categorically” opposes any change of the status quo.

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Iran says one dead in ‘industrial accident’ near military complex

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Parchin facility has previously come under scrutiny from UN nuclear watchdog

One person has been killed in an “industrial accident” near an Iranian military complex that has previously come under scrutiny from the UN nuclear watchdog, according to state media reports.

“An industrial accident took place [on Wednesday evening] in one of the factories in the Parchin area, leading to the death of one person and injuries to another,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency said. It gave no details of the cause of the accident.

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North Korea fires suspected ICBM amid signs of preparation for nuclear test

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South Korea calls launches ‘grave provocation’ and detects experiment that suggests forthcoming nuclear test

North Korea has fired three ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast, including one believed to have long-range capabilities, the South Korean military has said, a day after Joe Biden ended his first presidential visit to Asia.

Hours after the missile tests, South Korea said it had detected signs North Korea had conducted an experiment with a detonation device in preparation for a possible nuclear test, according to Yonhap news agency.

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Biden and South Korean president mull expanding joint military exercises

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US president willing to meet Kim Jong-un, while Seoul says deployment of US ‘strategic assets’ was discussed

Joe Biden and his South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk-yeol, have said they are considering expanding joint military exercises in response to the “threat” posed by North Korea, a move that is expected to enrage the regime as speculation builds that it could conduct a nuclear test.

Speaking in Seoul on the second day of his visit to South Korea, Biden said he was willing to meet North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, but only if he was “sincere and serious” about dismantling his nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

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White House braced for North Korean nuclear test during Biden’s Asia trip

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National security adviser says intelligence reflects ‘long-range missile test or a nuclear test, or frankly both’

The White House is braced for a North Korean missile or nuclear test while Joe Biden is on a trip to South Korea and Japan, which begins on Friday.

The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters on Wednesday: “Our intelligence does reflect the genuine possibility that there will be either a further missile test, including long-range missile test, or a nuclear test, or frankly both in the days leading into, on or after the president’s trip to the region.

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Time running out to reach Iran nuclear deal, warn experts

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Letter signed by former diplomats says Iran close to developing nuclear weapons capability

Leading former diplomats including seven ex-UK foreign and defence ministers have warned the Iran nuclear talks are heading to “corrosive stalemate devolving into a cycle of increased nuclear tension” and urged Tehran and Washington to show more flexibility.

Year-long talks in Vienna on reviving the deal and for the US, which was pulled out of the agreement by Donald Trump, to lift sanctions on Iran have in effect ground to a halt in a dispute over whether the west will lift the foreign terrorist organisation designation, and sanctions, against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

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Russia tests nuclear-capable missile in warning to enemies

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Putin boasts new intercontinental ballistic weapon will provide rivals with ‘food for thought’

Russia has said it had test-launched its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, a new addition to its nuclear arsenal, which Vladimir Putin said would give Moscow’s enemies something to think about.

The Russian president was shown on television being told by the military that the missile had been launched from Plesetsk in the north-west and hit targets in the Kamchatka peninsula in the far east.

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Kim Jong-un oversees missile test that North Korea claims advances nuclear program

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Leader appears well pleased with latest test of what state media reported was a new type of tactical guided weapon

North Korea has test-fired a new weapons system, under the supervision of leader Kim Jong-un, that it claims will boost the efficiency of its tactical nuclear weapons, state media reported.

The “new-type tactical guided weapon ... is of great significance in drastically improving the firepower of the frontline long-range artillery units and enhancing the efficiency in the operation of tactical nukes,” the official Korean Central News Agency said early on Sunday, without specifying when the test took place. It said the test was successful.

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