Russia inherited the nuclear weapons and the status of the Soviet Union, which was the second country to develop and test nuclear weapons, in 1949. The Soviet Union was the main rival of the US in the Cold War, which lasted from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. The two superpowers engaged in a fierce competition for nuclear supremacy and influence, building up huge arsenals and deploying missiles in various regions. The Soviet Union also developed the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, and the first intercontinental ballistic missile, R-7, in 1959.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and four of its former republics, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia, inherited its nuclear weapons. However, only Russia retained them, while the other three transferred them to Russia and joined the NPT as non-nuclear-weapon states. Russia is also one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and a party to the NPT, the CTBT, and the New START Treaty. Russia has been involved in several regional conflicts and crises, such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Syrian civil war, and the Iran nuclear deal.
According to SIPRI, Russia had an estimated 5,889 nuclear warheads as of 2023, of which 1,572 were deployed with operational forces. Russia also maintains a nuclear triad, with land-based, sea-based, and air-based delivery systems. Russia has been modernizing its nuclear forces and developing new types of weapons, such as hypersonic missiles, nuclear-powered cruise missiles, and nuclear torpedoes.
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