MOSCOW, November 3. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sent a notification on Russia’s withdrawal of the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the Foreign Ministry said in its statement.

"Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s notification on our country’s withdrawal of the CTBT ratification note has been sent to the CTBT and UN Secretary Antonio Guterres’ repository," the statement reads.

The treaty was signed on behalf of Russia on September 24, 1996 in New York and ratified by Russia on May 27, 2000. The document was supposed to become the main international legal instrument to stop any kind of nuclear testing. To date, however, the treaty has not entered into effect because it has not been ratified by 8 of the 44 states that have nuclear weapons or the potential to create them.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that the withdrawal of ratification of the treaty equalizes the situation in the field of nuclear testing for Moscow and Washington, which never ratified the document. He also pointed out that the withdrawal of the CTBT ratification does not mean that Russia plans to conduct nuclear tests.