Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia should restart the production of medium- and short-range nuclear-capable missiles and then consider where to deploy them, as the United States has deployed similar missiles in Europe and Asia.
Putin’s move finally ends all vestiges of one of the most important arms control treaties of the Cold War, amid fears the world’s two biggest nuclear powers could join forces with China to enter a new arms race.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987, was the first time the superpowers agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals and eliminate an entire category of nuclear weapons.
The United States under former President Donald Trump formally withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019, saying Moscow was violating the pact, a charge the Kremlin repeatedly denied and dismissed as an excuse.
Russia subsequently halted its development of missiles previously banned by the INF Treaty – ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500 km to 5,500 km.
Putin said Russia had pledged not to deploy such missiles, but the United States has restarted their production, brought them to Denmark for exercises and also taken them to the Philippines.
“We have to react to this and decide what to do next,” Putin was shown on state television telling Russia’s Security Council.
“Obviously, we need to start building these attack systems and then decide based on the actual situation where to install them if necessary to ensure our security,” he said.
Dissolution
Both Russia and the United States, by far the largest nuclear powers, have expressed regret over the dissolution of arms control treaties that were intended to slow the Cold War arms race and reduce the risk of nuclear war.
Trump said in 2018 that he wanted to end the INF Treaty because Russia had been violating it for years and he had concerns about China’s intermediate-range missile arsenal.
Putin has said in the past that the US withdrawal would trigger a new arms race.
The United States publicly cited Russia’s development of the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile, known in NATO as the SSC-8, as the reason for its withdrawal from the INF Treaty.
In his adjournment motion, Putin suggested that Russia could agree not to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad, on the Baltic coast. Since pulling out of the pact, the United States has tested missiles with a similar profile.
Putin said earlier this month that he could deploy conventional missiles within striking distance of the United States and its European allies if they allowed Ukraine to attack deep into Russia with long-range Western weapons.
In his remarks on Friday, Putin gave no indication of where the missiles might be deployed.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
