Putin, who spoke to students of the Institute of Experimental Physics in the presence of the director of the Russian nuclear agency, Rosatom, emphasized that this center is the result of the policy of the Kremlin (Russian Presidency) aimed at guaranteeing “technological sovereignty’.
In this regard, he once again accused the West of trying to contain and limit Russia’s development, provoking the conflict in Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022.
“Our predictions came true (…). We started thinking [em 2014] about what to do to guarantee sovereignty. A lot has already been done, but of course there is still a lot to do,” said the Russian head of state.
During the visit, the Russian president left a bouquet of flowers at the feet of the statue of Yuli Khariton, creator of the first Soviet atomic bomb (RDS-1) in 1949.
Andrei Sakharov, who pioneered the hydrogen bomb and who would later receive the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the human rights movement in the Soviet Union, also worked at this center.
Sarov is among the thirty Russian cities considered a closed territorial administrative division (ZATO, its abbreviation in Russian).
On February 27, 2022, three days after the start of the war in Ukraine, Putin put his nuclear forces on alert in response to a wave of Western economic sanctions.
Last May, Russia refused to reveal the number of nuclear warheads it possessed under the START III nuclear disarmament treaty after the United States made that data public.
Putin suspended his country’s compliance with START III early this year, although he argued that Russia did not cancel the agreement but only suspended it because of the hostile attitude of Washington, which supports Ukraine with weapons and financing.
The Kremlin leader announced in June the shipment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, his main ally in the military campaign in Ukraine and which borders Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, member states of NATO and the European Union (EU), as a deterrent measure against potential threats to the Atlantic Alliance.
Source: DN
