Putin said Russia had promised not to deploy such missiles, but the US had resumed production (File)
Moscow:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russia should resume production of intermediate- and shorter-range nuclear missiles and then consider where to deploy them after the United States brings similar missiles to Europe and Asia.
Putin’s move ultimately ends whatever remains of one of the Cold War’s most important arms control treaties, amid fears that the world’s two largest nuclear powers would join China in a new arms race.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987, marked the first time that 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 after saying Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation the Kremlin repeatedly denied and rejected as a pretext.
Russia subsequently imposed a moratorium on its own development of missiles previously banned by the INF Treaty: ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 km.
Putin said Russia had promised not to deploy such missiles, but the United States had resumed production of them, taken them to Denmark for exercises and also brought them to the Philippines.
“We have to respond to this and make decisions on what to do next in this direction,” Putin told Russia’s Security Council on state television.
“Apparently we need to start producing these attack systems and then, based on the actual situation, make decisions about where to place them, if necessary to ensure our security,” he said.
DISINTEGRATION
Russia and the United States, by far the largest nuclear powers, have both expressed regret over the collapse of the tangle of arms control treaties aimed at slowing the Cold War arms race and reducing the risk of nuclear war.
Trump said in 2018 that he wanted to end the INF Treaty because of what he said were years of Russian violations and his 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 blamed Russia’s development of the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile, known in NATO as the SSC-8, as the reason for its departure from the INF Treaty.
In his moratorium proposal, Putin suggested that Russia could agree not to deploy the missiles in the Baltic coast exclave of Kaliningrad. Since leaving 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 push deeper into Russia with Western long-range weapons.
In his comments 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.)
