Moscow yesterday warned US President Donald Trump that his plan to ditch a Cold War-era nuclear weapons treaty with Russia was a dangerous step.
Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov said this “would be a very dangerous step” and accused the US of risking international condemnation in a bid for “total supremacy” in the military sphere.
He insisted that Moscow observed “in the strictest way” the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, while accusing Washington of “flagrant violations.”
EPA-EFE
The treaty, signed in 1987 by then-US president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, prohibits the US and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of betweem 482.8km and 5,471.77km.
Trump on Saturday said Russia had long violated the treaty and it had prevented the US from developing new weapons.
“We’re the ones who have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honored the agreement, but Russia has not unfortunately honored the agreement, so we’re going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to pull out,” he told reporters.
“Russia has violated the agreement. They’ve been violating it for many years. I don’t know why [former US] president [Barack] Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out. And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons [while] we’re not allowed to,” he said.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton was set to arrive in Moscow last night for meetings this week with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov as well with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Putin aide Yuri Ushakov.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a “possible meeting” was being prepared between Putin and Bolton.
Ryabkov said he hoped Bolton would explain the US’ plans “more substantively and clearly.”
The Trump administration has complained of Moscow’s deployment of 9M729 missiles, which Washington says can travel more than 500km and thus violate the treaty.
The treaty resolved a crisis that began in the 1980s with the deployment of Soviet SS-20 nuclear-tipped, intermediate-range ballistic missiles targeting Western capitals.
Bolton is pressuring Trump to leave the INF and has blocked talks to extend the New Start treaty on strategic missiles set to expire in 2021, the Guardian newspaper reported.
US withdrawal from the INF “will destroy any prospects of extending the New Start treaty,” the head of the Russian Senate’s foreign affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachev, said on Facebook.
However, British Minister of State for Defense Affairs Gavin Williamson yesterday backed Trump, saying that the UK stood “absolutely resolute” with the US’ plan.
He blamed Russia for endangering the arms-control pact, and called on the Kremlin to “get its house in order.”
Williamson told the Financial Times that Moscow had made a “mockery” of the INF treaty.
Additional reporting by AP
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