nflict and armaments think-tank said on Monday .and Western support for Kyiv has heightened tensions among the world's nine nuclear-armed states, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think-tank said in a new set of research.
While the number of nuclear weapons fell slightly between January 2021 and January 2022, SIPRI said that unless immediate action was taken by the nuclear powers, global inventories of warheads could soon begin rising for the first time in decades. "All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies," Dr Wilfred Wan, Director of SIPRI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme, said in the think-tank's 2022 yearbook.
Russia has the world's biggest nuclear arsenal with a total of 5,977 warheads, some 550 more than the US. The two countries possess more than 90 per cent of the world's warheads, though SIPRI saidSIPRI said the global number of nuclear warheads fell to 12,705 in January 2022 from 13,080 in January 2021. An estimated 3,732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2,000 - nearly all belonging to Russia or the US - were kept in a state of high readiness.
"Relations between the world's great powers have deteriorated further at a time when humanity and the planet face an array of profound and pressing common challenges that can only be addressed by international cooperation," SIPRI board chairman and former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said.
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