By Anton Kolodiazny and Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will lift a moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range nuclear missiles because the United States has deployed such weapons in various regions of the world, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday.
Russia’s move, long signaled, would kill all that remains of one of the Cold War’s most important arms control treaties, amid fears that the world’s two biggest nuclear powers could enter a new arms race with China.
Russia and the United States, which both admit their relations are worse than at any time since the depths of the Cold War, have both expressed regret over the collapse of a pair of arms control treaties that sought to slow the arms race and reduce risk. nuclear war.
Asked by the 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 practically no longer viable and should be abandoned,” Lavrov said.
“The United States has arrogantly ignored the warnings of Russia and China and in practice moved to deploy this class of weapons in various regions of the world.
In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, marking the first time that 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 agreement, a charge the Kremlin has repeatedly denied and dismissed as a pretext.
Russia has since imposed a moratorium on its own development of missiles previously banned by the INF Treaty – land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of 500 km to 5,500 km (310 miles by 3,417 miles).
Trump said in 2018 that he wanted to terminate 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 has publicly blamed Russia’s development of the 9M729 land-based cruise missile, known in NATO as the SSC-8, as the reason for withdrawing from the INF Treaty.
In his moratorium proposal, Putin suggested Russia agree not to deploy missiles on its Baltic coast in Kaliningrad. After leaving the agreement, the United States tested missiles with a similar profile.
Russia launched a new medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as the Oreshnik, or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on November 21, in what Putin said was a direct response to US and British missile strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces.