By Anton Kolodyazhnyy and Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will lift a moratorium on the deployment of short- and intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles because the United States has deployed such weapons in several regions of the world, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday.
Russia’s long-announced move will end all that remains of one of the most important arms control treaties of the Cold War, amid fears that the world’s two largest nuclear powers may be entering into a new arms race together with China.
Russia and the United States, admitting that their relations are worse than at any time since the depths of the Cold War, have expressed regret over the disintegration of the thicket of arms control treaties that sought to curb the arms race and reduce the risk. of nuclear war.
Asked by state news agency RIA whether Russia could withdraw from the New START treaty before it expires in February 2026, Lavrov said there are currently “no conditions” for a strategic dialogue with Washington.
“Today it is clear that, for example, our moratorium on the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles is no longer practically viable and will have to be abandoned,” Lavrov said.
“The United States has arrogantly ignored warnings from Russia and China and has effectively moved on to deploying weapons of this class in several regions of the world.”
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987, marked the first time the superpowers agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals and eliminated 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 agreement, an accusation the Kremlin repeatedly denied and dismissed as a pretext.
Russia then imposed a moratorium on its own development of missiles previously banned by the INF treaty: land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 km to 5,500 km (310 mi to 3,417 mi).
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.
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 it abandoned the INF Treaty.
In his moratorium proposal, Putin suggested that Russia could agree not to deploy the missiles in its Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic coast. Since abandoning the pact, the United States has tested missiles with a similar profile.
Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik,” or Hazel Tree, into Ukraine on Nov. 21 in what Putin said was a direct response to attacks on Russia by Ukrainian forces using U.S. missiles. and British.