“He explained this by the deployment of similar weapons by the United States of America”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
He explained this by the deployment of similar weapons by the United States of America. According to him, the USA “ignored the warnings from Russia and China and in practice proceeded to deploy weapons of the specified class in various regions of the world.”
As an example of “testing in combat conditions” of a medium-range ballistic missile, Lavrov mentioned the impact of the Oreshnyk missile on Ukraine.
When asked whether Russia could withdraw from the new Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty (SNO) before its expiration in February 2026, Lavrov said that “today it is obvious that, for example, our (Russian – ed.) moratorium on the placement of RSMD (missiles of medium and shorter range – ed.) is practically unsustainable and will have to be abandoned.”
Intermediate and short-range missiles (IMFs) are land-based ballistic and cruise missiles capable of a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers and, as a rule, carrying a nuclear warhead.
In 1987, in Washington, the United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty on the elimination of the INF Treaty, which was valid until 2019. At the time, the US administration said that Russia had violated the treaty by deploying the 9M729 missile system and announced the termination of the treaty. In August 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia officially announced that the agreement had ceased to operate.
At the same time, Putin stated that if American medium-range missiles were deployed in Europe, Russia would be forced to deploy them as well, but emphasized that Russia was not going to be the first to deploy such missiles in Europe. The USA and NATO claim that Russia de facto does not comply with the moratorium it declared, referring to the deployment of the same 9M729 missiles. The West insists that their range is greater than 500 kilometers, which Moscow denies.