The Russian Federation is known to possess or have possessed three types of weapons of mass destruction: nuclear weapons, biological weapons, and chemical weapons. It is one of the five nuclear-weapon states recognized under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and one of the four countries wielding a nuclear triad.

As of 2025^[update], Russia's triad of deployed strategic nuclear weapons includes approximately 1,254 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 992 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and 586 cruise missiles or bombs for delivery by Tupolev Tu-160 and Tu-95 bombers. It also possesses the world's largest arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, approximately 1,500, of various shorter-range missiles, and is the only country to maintain nuclear-armed anti-air, anti-ballistic, and anti-submarine weapons. Since 2022, Russia has provided nuclear weapons to Belarus, deploying Iskander tactical ballistic missiles and bombs for Su-25 aircraft.

Russia possesses a total of 5,459 nuclear warheads as of 2025, the largest confirmed stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world. Russia's deployed missiles (those actually ready to be launched) number about 1,718, also the largest confirmed strategically deployed arsenal in the world as of 2025. The remaining weapons are either in reserve stockpiles, or have been retired and are slated for dismantling. Russia's predecessor state, the Soviet Union, reached a peak stockpile of about 45,000 nuclear warheads in 1986. The number of weapons Russia may possess is currently controlled by the bilateral New START treaty with the United States. Russia and the United States are the world's biggest nuclear powers, holding about 88% of the world's nuclear weapons.

The Soviet Union ratified the Geneva Protocol—prohibiting the use of biological and chemical weapons in interstate conflicts—on April 5, 1928, with reservations that were later dropped on January 18, 2001. Russia is also party to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. The Soviet biological weapons program violated the Biological Weapons Convention and was the world's largest, longest, and most sophisticated program of its kind. At its peak, the program employed up to 65,000 people.

Despite being a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia has continued to hold, and occasionally use^{[citation needed]}, chemical weapons. In 1997, Russia declared an arsenal of 39,967 tons of chemical weapons, which it worked in part to decrease. Its stock of weapons was officially declared destroyed in 2017. The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018 and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in 2020, both carried out by Russia, revealed that the country maintained an illicit chemical weapons program.^{[failed verification]} Russian forces also used, and admitted to using, chemical weapons during the invasion of Ukraine.

Three sites in the Russian SFSR and subsequently Russia produced 145 tons of weapons-grade plutonium (uncertainty ±8 tons) from 1948 to 2010, with a consistent production peak between 1967 and 1989. Following the Moscow test reactor F-1 in 1946, the Mayak site in Chelyabinsk-40 began construction. The first plutonium production reactor A-1 began operation in 1948, fuelling the RDS-1 test. The Mayak site received nine further reactors were constructed. Of these, four were used for plutonium production, the other six reactors primarily produced tritium for thermonuclear weapons. Plutonium was also produced by five reactors at the Siberian Chemical Combine in Tomsk-7, and three reactors at the Mining and Chemical Combine in Krasnoyarsk-26. The last plutonium production reactor in Russia is believed to have shut down in 2010. Mayak continues to operate two reactors for tritium and industrial radioisotope production.

Russian sites also produced 1,250 tons of highly enriched uranium (uncertainty ±120 tons) from 1949 to 2010, excluding HEU produced for naval nuclear reactors. Of this, 500 tons was downblended by the Megatons to Megawatts Program, and a further hundred tons were used in production research reactors, nuclear tests, and other downblending programs. Russia is now believed to possess 656 tons between HEU stockpiles and HEU inside weapons themselves. This began with the SU-20 electromagnetic separation plant, but the Soviet project quickly followed the Manhattan Project's gaseous diffusion scheme, constructing the D-1 plant in Sverdlovsk-44, eventually becoming the Ural Electrochemical Combine. The D-1 plant could produce 0.01 million SWU/year. The development of the gas centrifuge and waves of modernizations brought the Ural Electrochemical Combine to 11.9 million SWU/year by 1993. Further enrichment plants were built at the Siberian Chemical Combine, the Zelenogorsk Electrochemical Plant and the Angarsk Electrochemical Combine.

The Soviet Union used three major test sites: Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, Novaya Zemlya in the extreme north, and Kapustin Yar. Notable tests at Semipalatinsk following RDS-1 include RDS-4, the first Soviet tactical nuclear weapon, RDS-6s, the first Soviet weapon to use thermonuclear reactions in a layer cake design, sometimes called a boosted fission weapon, and RDS-37, the first Soviet true two-stage thermonuclear weapon. Novaya Zemlya was the site of further megaton-range explosions, including the Tsar Bomba, the largest weapon ever detonated, and the Raduga live test of an R-13 submarine-launched ballistic missile. Kapustin Yar was used for high-altitude nuclear tests launched by missiles, including the 1961 tests and Project K tests. The Soviet Army also conducted the Totskoye nuclear exercise in 1954. After the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, underground testing continued at Semipalatinsk and Novaya Zemlya until 1990. The Soviet Union also developed "clean" thermonuclear weapons, including weapons with only deuterium as thermonuclear fuel, used in a brief program of peaceful nuclear explosions.