On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin signed into law Russia's de-ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a landmark agreement that aims to completely ban all nuclear tests.
The text of the law on Russia's legal portal states that Moscow will no longer be bound by the UN-backed nuclear test ban starting November 2.
This is reported by Moscow Times.
Both Russia and the United States signed the treaty in 1996, but while Moscow ratified it in 2000, Washington never codified it into law.
Other holdouts to the treaty included China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel, as well as Egypt and Iran, both of which have not yet developed nuclear weapons themselves.
As a result, the CTBT never came into force as it was not ratified by all required signatories.
In early October, Putin stated that revoking Moscow's de-ratification of the treaty would "mirror [Russia's] relations with the United States."
The Kremlin previously denied that it intended to carry out nuclear weapons tests if it moved ahead with de-ratification. As Russian lawmakers moved through the legal process to de-ratify CTBT in recent weeks, news reports said that both Russia and the United States were conducting nuclear tests.
