Russia pulls out of treaty prohibiting short and medium-range nuclear missiles and issues warning to the West

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Putin has dramatically pulled out of a Cold War-era treaty banning short and medium-range nuclear missiles while warning the West to 'expect further steps' as tensions spiral.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev - now deputy head of the country's powerful Security Council - blamed NATO nations for forcing Moscow 's hand.
In a fiery post on X, he wrote: 'The Russian foreign ministry's statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries' anti-Russian policy.
'This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps'.
Medvedev, who has been exchanging barbs online with US President Donald Trump, gave no details about what those steps entailed.
But his warning comes just days after Trump said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to 'appropriate regions' in response to Russian threats.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, eliminated an entire class of ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500km.
The US withdrew from the deal in 2019, accusing Russia of breaching its terms - a charge Moscow vehemently denied. Since then, Russia had pledged not to deploy such weapons unless Washington did so first.
The collapse of the INF Treaty has stoked fears of a replay of a Cold War-era European missile crisis, when the US and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent in the 1980s.
Such weapons are seen as particularly destabilising because they take less time to reach targets, compared with intercontinental ballistic missiles, leaving no time for decision-makers and raising the likelihood of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning.
But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signalled last December that Moscow would abandon the moratorium if 'destabilising actions' by the US and NATO continued.
Lavrov told Russia's state news agency RIA Novosti in December that Moscow's unilateral moratorium on the deployment of such missiles was 'practically no longer viable and will have to be abandoned'.
'The United States arrogantly ignored warnings from Russia and China and, in practice, moved on to deploying weapons of this class in various regions of the world,' he told the news agency.
In a statement yesterday, Russia's Foreign Ministry confirmed it no longer considered itself bound by the ban, citing NATO's growing military presence in Europe and Asia-Pacific.
It specifically cited US plans to deploy medium-range Typhoon and Dark Eagle missiles in Germany starting next year.
'Since the situation is developing towards the actual deployment of US-made land-based medium- and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian Foreign Ministry notes that the conditions for maintaining a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar weapons have disappeared,' the statement said.
According to its statement, the West is openly stationing short-and medium-range missiles in various parts of the world, while Russia's initiatives on the issue have seen no reciprocity.
In its first public reaction to Trump's comments on the repositioning of US submarines, the Kremlin on Monday said it was not looking to get into a public spat with the US president.
'In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty. This is an ongoing process, that's the first thing,' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
'But in general, of course, we would not want to get involved in such a controversy and would not want to comment on it in any way,' he said.
'Of course, we believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric,' he added.
It comes as Russia's missile forces chief declared that the new Oreshnik intermediate-range missile, which Russia first used against Ukraine in November, has a range to reach all of Europe. Oreshnik can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.
Putin has praised the Oreshnik's capabilities, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at speeds up to Mach 10 are immune to being intercepted and are so powerful that the use of several of them in one conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack.
The Russian leader has warned the West that Moscow could use it against Ukraine's NATO allies who allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
But as Russia escalates its nuclear rhetoric, Ukraine continues to face relentless attacks.
The move comes amid a deadly wave of missile strikes pounding Ukraine overnight, with one railway worker killed and four others injured after Russian forces targeted a key rail hub in Lozova.
The strike on Lozova - described by the city's mayor as 'the most massive attack since the beginning of the war' - injured two children and damaged residential areas.
Elsewhere, two more people were wounded in a Russian drone attack on Zaporizhzhia , while Ukraine's air defences reported shooting down 29 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight.
The developments come as a deadline set by Trump for Russia to take 'steps to end the war' looms, with his envoy Steve Whitkoff set to visit Moscow this week for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.