Vladimir Putin urged to test atom bomb to scare the West

A leading Russian physicist has urged the Kremlin to test an atomic bomb to intimidate the West.

President Vladimir Putin meets Russian servicemen at the Kremlin in Moscow at the weekend. Picture: AFP

Russia was holding nationwide drills on Tuesday on the evacuation of civilians during a nuclear conflict, with a leading physicist urging the Kremlin to test an atomic bomb to intimidate the West.

The civil defence drills are based on a hypothetical scenario in which rescue workers are tasked with evacuating large numbers of people from “radiation zones”, ­according to leaked documents published by Baza, a media outlet with links to the security services. The scenario also mentions a nationwide mobilisation of forces and the introduction of martial law.

Russia holds civil defence drills every year but this is the first time they are being held simultaneously across the country.

Mikhail Kovalchuk, head of the Kurchatov Institute, Russia’s top nuclear energy research centre, said the Kremlin should stage an atomic weapons test as a show of force.

Mr Kovalchuk, who is said to be close to President Vladimir Putin, drew comparisons with the Soviet Union’s testing in 1961 of the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. He claimed it had forced the US to negotiate with the Soviet Union and drop its “aggressive” rhetoric.

“The situation is exactly the same now,” he said.

His brother, Yury Kovalchuk, is the head of the Bank of Russia and one of Mr Putin’s closest confidantes, and is believed to have encouraged him to invade Ukraine last year.

In August Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Arctic where more than 200 ­nuclear tests were staged by the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1990. Satellite images published later by CNN indicated new facilities and construction equipment at the former test site.

China, Russia and the US last tested nuclear weapons in the 1990s.

Senior Russian officials, including Mr Putin, have threatened repeatedly to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine – prompting Jessica Cox, NATO’s director of nuclear policy, to warn that there was a genuine risk that Mr Putin would follow through on the threat rather than lose the war.

Last week Russia unveiled plans to boost defence spending by $170bn, a 70 per cent increase from last year. The sum is equivalent to about 6 per cent of Russia’s GDP and represents 30 per cent of total public spending.

The Times