Russia Stops US Attempt to Use Nuclear Weapons in Space at UN

UN: The United States crafted a resolution urging nations to avoid an armaments race in space, but Russia rejected it on Wednesday. The United States interprets this as Moscow perhaps “hiding something.”
Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador to the UN, told reporters before to the vote, “It’s a joke of a resolution.”

The decision followed Washington’s accusation—which Moscow has refuted—that Moscow is working on a nuclear weapon designed to counter satellites from space. Speaking before the 15-member council’s decision, representatives of the US government refused to provide specifics of the information they had to support the claim.

Before the voting, Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood said to reporters that Russia’s rejection of the resolution “makes you wonder whether they’re hiding something.”

After almost six weeks of discussions, the United States and Japan pushed the draft Security Council resolution to a vote. 13 people voted in favor of it, China abstained, and Russia vetoed it.

Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, said earlier this year that his country opposed the use of nuclear weapons in space.

“Our position is clear and transparent: We have always been categorically against and are now against the deployment of nuclearweaponsinspace,” Putin said.

Asserting that nations had a duty to abide by the Outer Space Treaty, the U.N. resolution also urged states “to contribute actively to the objective of the peaceful use of outer space and of the prevention of an arms race in outer space.”

Russia and the United States are among the nations that have signed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits them from putting “any objects carrying nuclearweapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction in orbit around the Earth.”

According to three persons familiar with the conclusions of U.S. intelligence, the Russian capability is thought to be a nuclear warhead stationed in orbit, whose electromagnetic radiation, if it exploded, would take out an extensive network of satellites.

According to John Kirby, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, Russia has not yet used this kind of weapon.

Governments now see satellites in Earth’s orbit as essential resources that support a wide range of military operations on the planet; recent instances of space’s disproportionate involvement in contemporary warfare include satellite-based communications and drones linked to satellites used in the conflict in Ukraine.

In February 2022, Russia attacked neighboring Ukraine.

Sergey Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister of Russia, was reported by the TASS news agency as stating earlier this month that Washington and Moscow were in communication over the non-deployment of nuclear weapons in space.

A senior official in the U.S. government said, “We are in contact in that they rejected further discussions of the topic,” they said under anonymity. “I don’t know if he’s referencing something else, but that has been the level of contact that we’ve had on this topic.”