Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

Putin saw added opportunities for promoting Russian
strategic interests and, in particular, the Russian arms
control agenda. Moscow took advantage of Washington’s
intention (many think idealistic and eventually
detrimental to better U.S. interests) 75 to significantly
reduce and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons,
in order to expedite negotiations on the new bilateral
strategic arms reduction treaty (START III).
The Kremlin praised the signing of the treaty on
April 8, 2010 to replace both SORT and START I (that
had actually expired in December 2009) as a symbol
of “continued strategic parity.” 76 Pro-government
experts hailed the new treaty as extremely beneficial
for the RF. As stated by the Director of the U.S.
and Canada Institute of the RF Academy of Sciences,
Sergei Rogov:
We will not have to reduce anything prematurely.
In effect, the ceilings established by the new START
Treaty do not force us to reduce currently available
strategic offensive forces, in contrast to previous treaties
that banned or limited our heavy missiles as well
as our mobile MIRVed ICBMs. These limitations have
disappeared, and the Treaty allows us to conduct the
modernization of our strategic forces since the old
Soviet weapons have long exhausted their life-terms.
From now on, each side defines the composition and
structure of its strategic forces independently. Russia
now has the capability—previously denied to us—to
deploy new MIRVed ICBMs as well as new sea-based
systems. In effect, only budgetary allocations and
the potential of our industry will define how many
Topol-M and RS-24 missiles—that would apparently,
together with the Bulava, form the foundation of Russia’s
strategic offensive weapons—we would be able
to build. It may not be excluded that before the Treaty
expires and unless Russia and the U.S. conclude new
agreements on further reductions, as championed by
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