Russian
President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Russian-installed
leader of the Kherson region Vladimir Saldo, amid the ongoing
Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Moscow, Russia June 25, 2024.
Sputnik/Vyacheslav Prokofyev/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Putin says Russia may resume global deployment of intermediate range missiles
MOSCOW,
June 28 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia
should resume production of intermediate and shorter range
nuclear-capable missiles and then consider where to deploy them after
the United States brought similar missiles to Europe and Asia.
Putin's
move finally kills off all that remains from one of the most
significant arms controls treaties of the Cold War amid fears that the
world's two biggest nuclear powers could be entering a new arms race
together with China.
The
Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Mikhail
Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in 1987, marked the first time the
superpowers had agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenals and eliminated a
whole category of nuclear weapons.
The
United States under former President Donald Trump formally withdrew
from the INF Treaty in 2019 after saying that Moscow was violating the
accord, 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 - ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles
with ranges of 500 km to 5,500 km.
Putin
said Russia had pledged not to deploy such missiles but that the United
States had resumed their production, brought them to Denmark for
exercises and also taken them to the Philippines.
"We
need to respond to this and make decisions about what we will have to
do in this direction next," Putin was shown on state television telling
Russia's Security Council.
"Apparently,
we need to start manufacturing these strike systems and then, based on
the actual situation, make decisions about where – if necessary to
ensure our safety – to place them," he said.
DISINTEGRATION
Russia
and the United States, by far the biggest nuclear powers, have both
expressed regret about the disintegration of the tangle of arms control
treaties which sought to slow the Cold War arms race and reduce the risk
of nuclear war.
Trump
in 2018 said 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.
Putin has said in the past that the U.S. 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 it leaving the INF Treaty.
In
his moratorium proposal, Putin suggested Russia could agree not to
deploy the missiles in its Baltic coast exclave of Kaliningrad. Since
leaving the pact, the United States has tested missiles with a similar
profile.
Putin said earlier this month he could deploy conventional missiles
within striking distance of the United States and its European allies
if they allowed Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia with long-range
Western weapons.
In his comments on Friday, Putin gave no indication of where the missiles could be deployed.
Reporting by Dmitry Andtonov and Maxim Rodionov; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Gareth Jones