[7] The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol—prohibiting the use of biological and chemical weapons in interstate conflicts—on April 5, 1928, with reservations that were later dropped on January 18, 2001.

At its height, the Soviet Union and United States each mustered tens of thousands of warheads, under the doctrine of mutual assured destruction.

[20] After U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Russia responded by building-up their nuclear capabilities, in such a way as to counterbalance U.S.

[24] U.S. President Donald Trump announced on October 20, 2018, that the U.S. would no longer consider itself bound by the treaty's provisions, raising nuclear tensions between the two powers.

[34] In 2015, information emerged that Russia may be developing a new nuclear torpedo, the Status-6 Ocean Multipurpose System,[35][36][37] codenamed "Kanyon" by Pentagon officials.

[36][42] During an annual state-of-the-nation address given on March 1, 2018, President Vladimir Putin publicly claimed that Russia was now in possession of several new classes of nuclear weapons, including some with capabilities previously speculated to exist.

Putin discussed several new or upgraded weapons, including a hypersonic glide vehicle known as the Avangard, capable of performing sharp maneuvers while traveling at 20 times the speed of sound making it "absolutely invulnerable for any missile defense system.

[47][48][49] Most military analysts believe that, in this case, Russia would pursue an 'escalate to de-escalate' strategy, initiating limited nuclear exchange to bring adversaries to the negotiating table.

[50] Leaked documents seen by the Financial Times in 2024 described a threshold for the country's use of tactical nuclear weapons that is lower than Russia had previously disclosed.

[52] Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin told the FT: "This is the first time that we have seen documents like this reported in the public domain […] They show that the operational threshold for using nuclear weapons is pretty low if the desired result can’t be achieved through conventional means.

[54][55] After the Korean War, the Soviet Union transferred nuclear technology and weapons to the People's Republic of China as an adversary of the United States and NATO.

According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, "Khrushchev's nuclear-proliferation process started with Communist China in April 1955, when the new ruler in the Kremlin consented to supply Beijing a sample atomic bomb and to help with its mass production.

It is estimated that the Soviet Union had approximately 45,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled at the time of its collapse, according to Viktor Mikhaylov, head of the Federal Agency on Atomic Energy (Russia).

In September 1997, the former secretary of the Russian Security Council Alexander Lebed claimed 100 "suitcase sized" nuclear weapons were unaccounted for.

Russia is allegedly making efforts to build its influential hold in Africa for earning several billions of pounds by selling nuclear technology to developing African countries.

[62] Russia has reportedly trained its navy to target European sites with nuclear-capable missiles in a potential conflict with NATO, according to leaked documents.

The plans reveal a strategy for strikes across Western Europe, emphasizing Russia's reliance on nuclear weapons due to its conventional military limitations.

[63] The highest-ranking GRU defector Stanislav Lunev described alleged Soviet plans for using tactical nuclear weapons for sabotage against the United States in the event of war.

If the battery runs low, the weapon has a transmitter that sends a coded message – either by satellite or directly to a GRU post at a Russian embassy or consulate.

[64] He said that "it is surprisingly easy to smuggle nuclear weapons into the US" either across the Mexican border or using a small transport missile that can slip though undetected when launched from a Russian airplane.

[69] The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko by Russian state agents with radioactive polonium was described as the beginning of an era of nuclear terrorism using radiological weapons.

[84] On 25 September 2024, Putin warned the West that if attacked with conventional weapons Russia would consider a nuclear retaliation,[85] in an apparent deviation from the no first use doctrine.

[93] According to Ken Alibek, who was deputy-director of Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons agency, and who defected to the United States in 1992, weapons were developed in labs in isolated areas of the Soviet Union including mobilization facilities at Omutninsk, Penza and Pokrov and research facilities at Moscow, Stirzhi and Vladimir.

The incident occurred when spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a military facility in the city of Sverdlovsk (formerly, and now again, Yekaterinburg) 1,500 km (930 mi) east of Moscow on April 2, 1979.

[93] In 2022 Russian Ministry of Defense started construction of a new massive facility at Sergiev Posad-6 site that hosted bioweapons research in Soviet times.

[95] Also in 2022 the 48th Institute has registered a patent for "protective medium for freeze-drying of Yersinia pestis", a common biological weapon pathogen.

[100] On September 27, 2017, OPCW announced that Russia had destroyed its entire declared chemical weapons stockpile,[101][102][103] even though they continued using Novichok agents.

[108] In August 2020, Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk, Russia by a chemical agent later confirmed to be Novichok.

[113][114] In May 2023, a television report on Russia's Channel One showed a Russian battalion commander talking about the effectiveness of chemicals used as weapons.

[15][115] In December 2023, the Russian 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade wrote about its use of drones to drop K-51 grenades containing CS tear gas on Ukrainian positions.