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The Soviet Union plans to test between five and eight nuclear bombs
at the Novaya Zemlya test site over the next 16 months. The plans were leaked
to Volna, the local newspaper in Archangel, and have been confirmed by Viktor
Litovkin, a spokesman for the Soviet Ministry of Defence.

In a statement published in Izvestiya on Saturday, Litovkin said that
the tests were intended ‘to ensure the implementation of the programme of
the reduction and destruction of nuclear arms’. There would be one ‘low
power’ test this year, and ‘not more than four to six underground tests’
next year. He denied the allegation in Volna that 250 million roubles (around
£250 million at that time) would be spent on the tests and on modernising
the test facilities.

Litovkin also denied that there had been any ‘great secrecy’ about plans
to continue testing. He ignored the fact that the Ministry of Defence had
promised in 1989 to give full details of future test plans to the people
living near the test site.

The Soviet Union’s main test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan will
be closed by the end of the year, said Litovkin. The test programme had
already been cut ‘three-to-four-fold’, he said.

Soviet greens are becoming increasingly sceptical about the wind down
of testing. The Semipalatinsk site was originally scheduled to close at
the end of this month, but then three further tests of over 20 kilotonnes
were announced. Local protest was so vociferous that the Ministry of Defence
hastily offered the local people 5 billion roubles compensation if they
would accept these ‘final’ tests.

Olzhas Suleimanov, the chairman of the ‘Nevada-Palatinsk’ movement which
spearheaded the campaign to close the site, was sceptical about the money.
He asked where the Ministry of Defence would obtain such a sum, which was
not provided for in this year’s defence budget.