Russia's treaty nuclear disarmament

Russia’s treaty nuclear disarmament

Moscow (dpa) — Russia on Monday said it is no longer adhering to a key nuclear disarmament treaty, years after the United States withdrew from the accord.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow is ending a moratorium under which it had been reportedly adhering to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty since the US left in 2019.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to respond to the planned deployment of US missiles in Germany from 2026 in a “mirror-like” manner.

The weapons for the Russian response were already close to being finalized a year ago, according to the Kremlin.

The INF Treaty, signed in 1987 by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US president Ronald Reagan, provided for the elimination of all land-based ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with a shorter range of 500 to 1,000 kilometres and an intermediate range of 1,000 to 5,500 kilometres.

However, Washington withdrew from the treaty in 2019, citing Russian violations.

According to the German military, the stationing of US nuclear weapons in Germany is meant to serve as a deterrent in response to Russia’s deployment of nuclear-armed Iskander rockets in its exclave of Kaliningrad, which have sufficient range to reach German cities.

The US weapons are to include Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can technically also be equipped with nuclear weapons, SM-6 air defence missiles and newly developed hypersonic weapons, which are intended to reach further than previously stationed land systems.