Russia Invites US to Verify Alleged Secret Nuclear Tests in Bid to Ease Tensions

Russia on Tuesday said it was willing to hold talks with the United States about Washington's allegations that Moscow secretly conducted underground nuclear tests, offering the discussions as a way to defuse rising tensions between the world's two biggest nuclear powers.

Moscow has in recent weeks tested nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable delivery systems, but it rejects US President Donald Trump's claim that it detonated a nuclear warhead in secret. Trump sparked alarm last month when he said he had ordered the United States to test its atomic weapons in response to drills by Russia and China — a suggestion both Moscow and Beijing denied.

None of the three countries has publicly detonated a nuclear warhead since the 1990s. All have signed, but not ratified, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans all nuclear test explosions; the treaty is not yet in force until a number of states ratify it.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Russia was prepared to speak with US officials about Washington's concerns and invited verification through international monitoring.

"We are ready to discuss the suspicions raised by our American colleagues regarding the possibility that we might be secretly doing something deep underground," Lavrov said in a televised interview.

Lavrov suggested that the United States could check for any warhead detonation using the global seismic monitoring network run by the CTBTO Preparatory Commission. He also noted that "other tests, both subcritical, or those without a chain nuclear reaction, and carrier tests, have never been prohibited," referring to experiments that do not create a nuclear yield.

Russia said it had not received detailed explanations from Washington about the specific allegations. "So far, no explanations have been provided by our American counterparts," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a telephone briefing.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Russia and the United States together possess roughly 8,000 deployed and stockpiled nuclear warheads — about 85 percent of the global total.

- Spat with Putin? -

Lavrov's televised appearance was his first in nearly two weeks, an absence that prompted media speculation about his standing with President Vladimir Putin — speculation the Kremlin repeatedly denied. Press reports said a planned Putin–Trump summit in Budapest was cancelled after an allegedly tense phone call between Lavrov and US officials; Lavrov dismissed those reports, saying the conversation had been "well, polite, without any breakdown."

Trump subsequently shelved the planned meeting and announced new sanctions on Moscow, saying he did not consider Putin serious about resolving the Ukraine conflict. Lavrov said the exchange over alleged nuclear tests was unrelated to the cancelled summit and that Moscow remained open to a possible meeting between Putin and Trump.

These allegations have not been independently verified. International monitoring systems exist to detect underground nuclear detonations, but any formal inquiry would depend on cooperation between capitals and the relevant international organisations.