Russia told an international organization set up to verify a ban on nuclear tests that a military testing accident in northern Russia earlier this month was none of its business and that handing it radiation data was entirely voluntary. Russia has acknowledged that five nuclear workers were killed in the explosion on Aug. 8, which occurred during a rocket engine test at sea in far northern Russia. The Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) said that four Russian monitoring sites closest to the mysterious explosion went offline days after the blast, fueling suspicions that Russia may have tampered with them.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said his country's transmission of data from radiation stations to the CTBTO was voluntary and that the Aug. 8 accident was not a matter for the CTBTO anyway, Interfax reported Tuesday. Nuclear experts interviewed by The Moscow Times agreed that Russia’s monitoring stations likely went offline to keep other countries, primarily the United States, from finding out exactly what had exploded in the accident. “I think this is more related to counterintelligence activities; not nuclear, but national security,” said Alexander Uvarov, the chief editor of Russia’s AtomInfo website. “The issue isn’t that [radiation] levels are dangerous for people, it’s just a matter of secrecy [for the authorities],” Andrei Frolov, the co-chair of Moscow's Public Environmental Organizations Union, told The Moscow Times.