Despite revoking its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), Russia continues to boost its contribution into the global nuclear test monitoring effort, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Special Monitoring Service Viktor Korshak said, Paralel.Az reports citing TASS.

"The Russian Federation fully complies with all the obligations it had undertaken, despite revoking the treaty’s ratification," Korshak told the Zvezda television channel during the Army-2024 forum.

He added that Russia completed its national element of the international monitoring system - an important instrument of the treaty’s verification - on December 23, 2023, by certifying the Russian seismic station in the Far Eastern city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

"It [the International Monitoring System (IMS) of the CTBT] is a global network of seismic, infrasound, radionuclide and hydroacoustic stations and laboratories, whose goal is to process the registered special information in real time. The outcome of their work is the ability to detect both small-yield and large-yield nuclear tests by any country, anywhere on the Earth," he said.

The Russian segment of the IMS is the second-largest, the official continued. In his words, Russia has fully complied with all obligations that it had undertaken under the treaty.

"Our contribution is evident, because it constitutes a vital element in the global nuclear test control system," Korshak added.

A total of 32 monitoring stations operate in Russia as part of the IMS network, making it the second-largest contributor after the United States. However, Korshak said that the United States has not yet fully completed its national monitoring network.

"We have fulfilled all the obligations that we had undertaken, and we continue to comply with the treaty in full. This has no relation whatsoever to the decision to revoke the ratification,’ he added.

In 1996, 187 countries signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), however, it has never taken effect because it was not ratified by eight countries out of 44 with nuclear weapons or means to create them, including the US. On November 2, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law according to which Moscow was revoking its CTBT ratification. As Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed, this does not mean that Russia is planning on conducting nuclear tests.