A brand new research reveals that an extra 136 warheads have been attributed to Russia, which has the world’s largest arsenal with 5,889 operational warheads, in addition to China, India, North Korea and Pakistan.
(Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters Archive)
A brand new report has mentioned the world’s variety of operational atomic warheads elevated in 2022, within the shadow of heightened nuclear tensions for the reason that Russia-Ukraine warfare.
The 9 official and unofficial nuclear powers held 9,576 ready-to-use warheads in 2023 –– up from 9,440 the 12 months prior, based on the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor revealed by the NGO Norwegian People’s Aid on Wednesday.
Those weapons have a “collective destructive power” equal to “more than 135,000 Hiroshima bombs,” the report mentioned.
The figures are revealed as Moscow has repeatedly raised the nuclear menace in connection to its warfare in Ukraine and Western navy assist to the Eastern European nation.
On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced that he had agreed with Minsk to deploy “tactical” nuclear weapons in Belarus, a rustic on the EU’s doorstep.
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The extra 136 warheads to the ready-to-use international nuclear stockpile final 12 months have been attributed to Russia, which has the world’s largest arsenal with 5,889 operational warheads, in addition to China, India, North Korea and Pakistan.
“This increase is worrying, and continues a trend that started in 2017,” editor of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor, Grethe Lauglo Ostern, mentioned in a press release.
At the identical time, the entire stockpile of nuclear weapons, which additionally contains these faraway from service, continues to say no.
In the identical 12 months, the variety of nuclear weapons fell from 12,705 to 12,512, as a result of decommissioning of previous warheads in Russia and the United States.
But Ostern warned that except the development of latest warheads being added doesn’t cease, “the total number of nuclear weapons in the world will also soon increase again for the first time since the Cold War.”
The eight official nuclear powers are the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea, whereas Israel is thought to have nuclear weapons unofficially.
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Source: TRTWorld and businesses
Source: www.trtworld.com
