How Russian and American signaling turned nuclear again
5:11 pm, October 30, 2025
Source: Meduza
Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines
Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to resume testing nuclear weapons for the first time in 33 years. The announcement, made during the president’s tour of Asia and following Moscow’s recent tests of two nuclear-powered weapons, appears intended as a message to rival nuclear powers China and Russia. On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed concern that Trump had been improperly briefed on Russia’s tests of its Poseidon super-torpedo and Burevestnik cruise missile. “They certainly cannot be viewed as nuclear testing at all,” Peskov explained, warning that Moscow would respond in kind if another country broke the global moratorium on nuclear testing.
Americans should know that Russia is developing the Burevestnik and Poseidon largely for political and even psychological reasons. Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations’ Institute for Disarmament Research, told Meduza that he sees parallels between Vladimir Putin and Nikita Khrushchev in their approaches to weapons development. Under both leaders, the Kremlin grasps at devices and technologies it can tout as unique and unrivaled. Engineers are happy to play along, Podvig said. At the same time, these are long-term, ongoing programs, and it’s misguided to treat their existence as direct responses to some recent event (such as talk of the U.S. supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine).
Podvig compared Russia’s nuclear-powered missiles to America’s “Golden Dome,” describing it as an equally unrealistic military project whose significance is primarily political. Russia has long harbored the same concerns about U.S. missile defense that Washington now expresses about the Poseidon and Burevestnik. Each side is sending its own “unfriendly signals,” Podvig said. “So what we’re seeing is an exchange of sorts.”
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/10/31/how-russian-and-american-signaling-turned-nuclear-again