Russia's Next Nuclear Weapons Test Will Likely Be in This Location

Mikhail Kovalchuk, Russian President Vladimir Putin's ally, said on Thursday where Moscow could next test its nuclear weapons.

Kovalchuk, a physicist and member of an elite group close to Putin, proposed testing nuclear weapons at Russia's nuclear test site in Novaya Zemlya, an Arctic Ocean archipelago, "at least once" to scare the West.

The Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test, an underwater explosion, on Novaya Zemlya in 1955. Until 1990, a total of 130 tests were carried out at the site, including the October 1961 detonation of the largest nuclear weapon ever tested, the 50MT AN602 Tsar Bomba hydrogen bomb, according to the non-profit organization Nuclear Threat Initiative.

New satellite imagery obtained by the California-based Middlebury Institute for International Studies shared with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty this week shows that Russia has significantly increased construction at Novaya Zemlya since 2021. There are at least two new buildings at the site, while ships and new shipping containers have arrived at its port, a comparison of imagery taken in July 2021 and in June 2023, showed.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also paid the facility a visit in August, officials said.

Kovalchuk, head of the national research center Kurchatov Institute, was cited by Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti as saying that the West's actions toward Russia are becoming "increasingly aggressive," and that many experts propose "adjusting the fundamentals of state policy in this area."

Kovalchuk said that. in 1961, the Soviet Union, in response to rhetoric from the United States, tested a powerful nuclear bomb, "after which the Americans immediately began to negotiate, instantly."

"The situation is exactly the same now. It's enough to carry out tests on Novaya Zemlya... At least once. And everything will fall into place," Kovalchuk added. He is the brother of the head of Rossiya Bank, Yury Kovalchuk, and a close friend of Putin.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs, said on Friday that the two brothers are "both members of the Russian president's inner circle."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

The Baza Telegram channel, which is linked to Russia's security services, reported on Thursday that, on October 3, Russian authorities will hold nationwide large-scale drills because of the "growing danger of armed conflicts including [with] nuclear-capable powers near Russia's borders."

The channel cited the head of Russia's Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing, or Rospotrebnadzor.

The drills will imagine that the country is at least partially under martial law and that up to 70 percent of the country's housing facilities have been destroyed; that general mobilization has ended; and that there is the possibility of radioactive contamination, Baza reported.

Putin has said he would be prepared to use nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory.

"If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff," the Russian president said in a televised address to the nation in September 2022.

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