Russia and weapons of mass destruction

• 1. Introduction

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  Russia's weapons of mass destruction programs span three domains: nuclear, biological, and chemical. With 5,459 nuclear warheads, Russia holds more than any other nation on earth. In 1961, the Soviet Union detonated the Tsar Bomba over the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. The device yielded 50 megatons, and it remains the largest nuclear explosion in history. At its Cold War peak, the Soviet stockpile reached 45,000 warheads. Russia did not merely inherit that arsenal. It inherited the programs that built it and the doctrine that governs its use.

  Beyond nuclear arms, Russia inherited from the Soviet Union the world's largest biological and chemical weapons programs. Each operated covertly for decades while the Soviet Union maintained formal treaty obligations. Allegations of ongoing violations have persisted into the present day.

  How has Russia's nuclear posture shifted since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022? What happened inside the biological weapons program that employed tens of thousands of people? And what do the new weapons Putin announced in 2018 signal about Russia's strategic ambitions?

• 2. The Nuclear Triad

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  Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal numbers approximately 2,832 weapons across three delivery platforms. The Strategic Rocket Forces operate 333 intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying 1,254 warheads. Their six missile fields are located at Kozelsk, Tatishchevo, Uzhur, Dombarovsky, Kartalay, and Aleysk. The Russian Navy adds 992 warheads, carried by 192 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Those include the RSM-56 Bulava and the R-29RMU Sineva and Lajner, deployed on twelve submarines of the Delfin and Borei classes. Patrols originate from three naval bases at Nerpich'ya, Yagel'Naya, and Rybachiy.

  Long Range Aviation completes the triad with 67 Tupolev Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic bombers. Those aircraft carry 586 cruise missiles or bombs. Bombers count as a single weapon under treaty counting rules, even though each can carry up to 20. Russia also holds approximately 1,500 tactical nuclear weapons, deliverable by land, sea, and air. Russia and the United States together hold 88% of the world's nuclear weapons. As of 2026, Russia operates 13 nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines: five of the Delta class and eight of the Borei class.

  The Russian Space Forces maintain the early-warning architecture. They operate Voronezh and Don-2N radars and the Oko and EKS satellite constellations. Anti-ballistic missile systems including the A-135 and S-400 form part of this network. Each of those systems can itself be armed with nuclear warheads. Command authority for nuclear use formally rests with the President. Any launch order must be co-signed by the Minister of Defence or the Chief of the General Staff.

• 3. Building the Bomb

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  The Mayak site in Chelyabinsk-40 began construction following the Moscow test reactor F-1 in 1946. The first plutonium production reactor there, designated A-1, began operation in 1948. Its output fueled the RDS-1, the Soviet Union's first nuclear test. Mayak eventually housed ten reactors in total. Four were dedicated to plutonium production; the other six primarily produced tritium for thermonuclear weapons.

  Between 1948 and 2010, three Russian production sites manufactured 145 tons of weapons-grade plutonium. The uncertainty margin was plus or minus 8 tons. Production peaked consistently between 1967 and 1989. The Siberian Chemical Combine in Tomsk-7 contributed five additional reactors, and the Mining and Chemical Combine in Krasnoyarsk-26 added three more. The last Russian plutonium production reactor is believed to have shut down in 2010.

  Russian sites also produced 1,250 tons of highly enriched uranium between 1949 and 2010, not counting uranium for naval reactors. The early work began with the SU-20 electromagnetic separation plant. The Soviets quickly followed the Manhattan Project's gaseous diffusion method. They built the D-1 plant in Sverdlovsk-44, which eventually grew into the Ural Electrochemical Combine. The D-1 plant initially produced 0.01 million SWU per year. Successive modernizations brought the Ural Electrochemical Combine to 11.9 million SWU per year by 1993. It remains the world's largest uranium enrichment site. Mayak operates as the world's second-largest reprocessing site. Russia's nuclear complex, managed by Rosatom, holds stockpiles of weapons-grade material theoretically equivalent to over 40,000 weapons. Under the Megatons to Megawatts Program, 500 tons of that highly enriched uranium was downblended into reactor fuel.

• 4. Arms Control and Its Limits

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  Arms reduction talks between the United States and the Soviet Union opened in 1982. For decades, both sides had accumulated tens of thousands of warheads under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. The talks culminated in the START I treaty, signed in 1991. It was the first nuclear arms reduction agreement between the two powers. START I capped each country's deployed warheads at 6,000, roughly halving the 10,000-12,000 each was then fielding.

  START II followed but Russia never ratified it. A proposed START III never cleared negotiations. The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty of 2002 capped warheads at 2,200. The New START treaty, ratified in 2010, set the current limit of 1,550 deployed weapons per side. That treaty ran through 2026.

  After U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Russia responded by expanding its nuclear capabilities. The goal was to offset the American advantage. Russia declined to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted on the 7th of July 2017, by 122 states. On the 20th of October 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Most analysts had already concluded that Russia's nuclear posture under Putin had come into conflict with that treaty.

  On the 21st of February 2023, Putin suspended Russia's participation in New START. He refused to allow U.S. and NATO inspectors access to Russia's nuclear facilities. On the 2nd of November 2023, Putin signed a law withdrawing Russia's ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Russia had signed and ratified that treaty in 1996. The U.S. alleged in 2020 that Russia had carried out nuclear weapons experiments between 1996 and 2019. Those experiments were said to have created nuclear yield. The legal status of such tests remained unclear since the treaty was never in force.

• 5. New Weapons and Shifting Doctrine

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  During his annual state-of-the-nation address on the 1st of March 2018, President Putin announced that Russia possessed several new classes of nuclear weapons. Putin described the RS-28 Sarmat, a super-heavy thermonuclear ICBM under development by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau since 2009. The Sarmat is liquid-fueled and MIRV-equipped. It can carry up to 10 heavy warheads or 15 lighter ones, plus countermeasures designed to defeat anti-missile systems. Russia presented it as a direct response to the U.S. Prompt Global Strike program.

  Putin also described the Avangard, a hypersonic glide vehicle. He called it "absolutely invulnerable for any missile defense system," citing its ability to perform sharp maneuvers at 20 times the speed of sound. He also discussed the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, designated the 9M730, with effectively unlimited range. Animated presentations of all these weapons were shown to the live audience. Putin invited a public online poll to name them.

  In 2015, information emerged about a possible new nuclear torpedo called the Status-6 Ocean Multipurpose System. Pentagon officials codenamed it "Kanyon." Status-6 is described as a torpedo-shaped robotic submarine. It can travel at speeds between 100 and 185 km/h, with a range of 10,000 km. Its maximum operating depth is 1,000 meters. It is designed to generate a tsunami wave up to 500 meters tall and contaminate enemy coastlines with cobalt-60. Two potential carrier submarines are the Project 09852 Belgorod and the Project 09851 Khabarovsk, laid down in 2012 and 2014 respectively.

  On the 2nd of June 2020, Putin signed a six-page executive order titled "Fundamentals of Russia's Nuclear Deterrence State Policy." The document endorsed nuclear use in response to non-nuclear strikes, citing the improved capabilities of U.S. conventional weapons. By the 25th of September 2024, Putin extended that position further. He warned that conventional attacks on Russia could trigger nuclear retaliation, signaling movement away from the no-first-use stance. Leaked documents seen by the Financial Times in 2024 described a tactical nuclear use threshold lower than Russia had previously disclosed. The document included training scenarios for a possible invasion by China. Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin, spoke to the FT about the documents. He said they showed the operational threshold for nuclear use was "pretty low if the desired result can't be achieved through conventional means."

• 6. Sharing the Arsenal

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  On the 27th of February 2022, Belarusians voted in a constitutional referendum with sweeping military implications. The vote repealed a post-Soviet prohibition on basing nuclear weapons in Belarus. It also removed the country's neutral status and permitted permanent basing for the Russian Armed Forces. The European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada all criticized the vote. They cited the Belarusian government's crackdowns on political opposition as context.

  At a meeting on the 25th of June 2022, Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko agreed to deploy Russian short-range nuclear-capable missiles in Belarus. Russia supplied Belarus with Iskander-M missile systems in 2023. Putin announced the first warhead delivery at the St. Petersburg International Forum on the 16th of June 2023. Those warheads are believed to carry variable yields between 5 and 50 kilotons. Russia also modified Belarusian Su-25 bombers to carry nuclear air-dropped bombs and trained Belarusian pilots. The yield of those bombs is believed not to exceed 20 kilotons. Belarus exercised use of both the Iskanders and the Su-25s with training warheads in May 2024.

  On the 10th of December 2024, Lukashenko stated that Belarus was hosting "dozens" of Russian warheads. The most likely storage location, based on open-source analysis, is a Cold War-era depot near Asipovichy. Lukashenko had described the weapons as ones Belarus would use "without hesitation in case of aggression against Belarus." Putin maintained that Russia controls the launch authority. General Secretary of the CIS Sergey Lebedev described the arrangement as a "double nuclear button." Putin has also stated that Russia's Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile could be deployed to Belarus in the second half of 2025.

• 7. Biological Weapons

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  Soviet biological weapons research began in the 1920s, decades before the Biological Weapons Convention existed to prohibit it. The program grew substantially in the early 1970s. After 1975, it ran primarily through a nominally civilian agency called Biopreparat. It also drew on the Soviet Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Chemical Industry. The Ministry of Health and the Soviet Academy of Sciences contributed as well. At its peak the program employed approximately 65,000 people.

  Ken Alibek served as deputy-director of Biopreparat before defecting to the United States in 1992. He described weapons developed at labs in Omutninsk, Penza, Pokrov, Moscow, Stirzhi, and Vladimir. Testing took place at a facility called Rebirth Island, known as Vozrozhdeniya, in the Aral Sea. Agents were fired into the air above monkeys tied to posts; the animals were then monitored to measure effects. The Soviet Union had signed the Biological Weapons Convention on the 10th of April 1972, and ratified it on the 26th of March 1975. Alibek assessed that although the offensive program officially ended in 1992, Russia may have continued activities prohibited by the treaty.

  The 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak forced the program into the open. On the 2nd of April 1979, anthrax spores were accidentally released from a military facility in Sverdlovsk, 1,500 km east of Moscow. The outbreak infected 94 people and killed most of them over a period of six weeks. The full story was not published in Russia until 1993. In 2022, Russia began construction of a new facility at Sergiev Posad-6, a site that had hosted Soviet-era bioweapons research. That same year, the 48th Central Scientific Research Institute registered a patent. The patent covered a protective medium for freeze-drying Yersinia pestis, a common biological weapon pathogen. As of 2024, the U.S. Department of State assessed that Russia maintains an offensive biological weapons program in violation of the Biological Weapons Convention.

• 8. Chemical Weapons

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  Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on the 13th of January 1993, and ratified it on the 5th of November 1997. In 1997, Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons. The stockpile included blister agents: Lewisite, mustard, and a Lewisite-mustard mix. It also included nerve agents: Sarin, Soman, and VX. The August 1998 Russian financial crisis froze destruction efforts for three years after ratification.

  Russia stored its declared chemical weapons at eight locations across the country. By October 2011, Russia had destroyed 57% of its stockpile. The last Russian chemical disposal facility, located in Kizner, Udmurtia, opened in December 2013. On the 27th of September 2017, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announced that Russia had destroyed its entire declared stockpile. That announcement came even as Russia continued developing and using Novichok agents.

  The Novichok program was developed and tested in the 1970s and 1980s. The intended production site was the Pavlodar Chemical Plant in Soviet Kazakhstan. It was still under construction when Russia decided to demolish the facility in 1987, ahead of the forthcoming Chemical Weapons Convention. In March 2018, former GRU agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury, United Kingdom. The chemical agent was confirmed to be Novichok. The United Kingdom accused the Russian government or rogue Russian agents of orchestrating the attack. In August 2020, opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk, Russia. A joint investigation by Bellingcat, CNN, Der Spiegel, The Insider, and El Pais implicated Russia's Federal Security Service. Navalny later recorded a phone call with what appeared to be an FSB agent. The agent indicated they had been tasked with removing Novichok from Navalny's clothing.

  Russian forces reportedly used chemical weapons 465 times in Ukraine between the 24th of February 2022, and December 2023, usually deploying tear gas grenades. On the 17th of June 2025, Ukraine's Battalion K-2 destroyed a Russian BM-21 Grad launcher. The unit then intercepted radio traffic in which Russian soldiers warned nearby units to protect themselves. The soldiers said the rockets were "loaded with chemistry."