Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

U.S. surface ships and attack submarines, and invited
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to reciprocate.
Gorbachev made a similar announcement on October
5, pledging to eliminate many TNWs and transfer others
from deployment with operational units to central
storage facilities. The following January, Boris Yeltsin,
President of the new Russian Federation, committed
his government to implement Gorbachev’s original
offer, as well as some other reductions that Yeltsin
subsequently added. 1
Although these 1991-92 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives
(PNI) consisted only of parallel and reciprocal
measures, they have eliminated more nuclear
weapons than any arms control treaty. Under their
terms, Russia and the United States have destroyed
thousands of their nonstrategic nuclear weapons and
removed other nonstrategic nuclear systems from operational
deployment, transferring their warheads to
secure storage. Yet, the PNIs are not a formal arms
control agreement, and they do not entail provisions
to verify compliance. Neither Russia nor the United
States has allowed monitors from the other country
to conduct technical inspections at its TNW storage
sites. The two governments also do not exchange data
about their remaining nonstrategic weapons, though
at some NATO-Russia meetings, they have simply
reported the percentage of PNI-applicable warheads,
but not their absolute numbers, that they have eliminated.
2
In 2005 and 2006, however, American officials complained
that the Russian Government was not providing
sufficient information to substantiate its claims to
have made further reductions in its nonstrategic nuclear
systems. 3 Some multilateral nuclear arms control
agreements do cover TNW, but their provisions are
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