Latest news with #INF
Time of India
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Russia Slams U.S. Missile Deployments Near Its Borders; Warns Of Conflict Ahead Of Trump-Putin Meet
/ Aug 11, 2025, 04:32AM IST Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has warned that U.S. missile systems are appearing in regions that directly threaten Russia's security. Speaking on the lifting of Moscow's INF missile moratorium, Ryabkov said Russia's weapons deployments are a response to U.S. and NATO moves near its borders, warning that the risk of nuclear conflict is not decreasing. He also hinted at advanced systems beyond the Oreshnik, without revealing details. Watch
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First Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- First Post
The missiles return: As Russia ends moratorium, is this return of Cold War 2.0?
The scrapping of Russia's missile moratorium is a mirror to the world, it shows that deterrence is being recalibrated not through dialogue, but through deployment read more With the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty long gone and the New Start agreement set to expire within months, what was once a guarded stalemate between superpowers is now an open-ended competition. Image: REUTERS As the conflicts around the globe spread and escalate, Russia has decided to lift its self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of medium- and long-range ground-launched missiles, marking it as a new era of new cold war volatility. This move is not just a regional message; it is a response to the US provocation. It can be summed up as an inflexion point in the international order, a security flare in a world that is already seemingly overfilled with rivalries, proxy wars and weaponised diplomacy. It is not about moving into Cold War 2.0. We are sprinting into something more volatile, more layered, and dangerously underwritten by emerging technology and vanishing trust. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD This announcement effectively declares the death of one of the last remnants of the Cold War's strategic arms control framework. With the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty long gone and the New Start agreement set to expire within months, what was once a guarded stalemate between superpowers is now an open-ended competition, where restraint is replaced by readiness and silence by sharp escalation. A Funeral for INF and Restraint The INF Treaty, signed in 1987, was not simply an agreement between Washington and Moscow. It was a symbol of what diplomacy could achieve even at the height of mistrust. For decades, it held a particular class of missiles in check. There was no time to react to these weapons – they were too high-speed and too lethal to react sensibly. Their elimination stabilised Europe, calmed publics and provided breathing space to both Nato and the Warsaw Pact. However, that legacy is now coming apart after the United States came out of the treaty in 2019, citing it had been repeatedly violated by Russia. Russia rejected it, stating that it was a ploy by the US to escalate its missile development programme. Despite the official termination of the treaty by the US, Russia continued a unilateral moratorium, apparently as a diplomatic gesture. That restraint is now over. Russia has declared that conditions no longer justify self-limitation. The rationale offered points to deployments of American intermediate-range systems in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. But the implications run deeper. This is not about matching threats. It is about regaining leverage. It is about writing new rules for a security environment that no longer respects legacy arrangements. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The Geography of Fear The strategic geography of Europe is again under transformation. Ranges of 1,000 to 5,500 kilometres will allow missiles to be based in Belarus or in the western regions of Russia and, within a couple of minutes, reach all of Central Europe, much of the UK, and significant parts of Southern Europe. Policymakers in Brussels, Berlin and Paris would have only seconds to judge an incoming launch and react. These are not imaginary hypotheses but operational realities. Modern missile systems are not like the ones decommissioned under INF. They are faster, stealthier, and capable of precision targeting. Russia's Oreshnik missile, reportedly entering serial production, is a hypersonic platform capable of flying at over Mach 10 and carrying either conventional or nuclear warheads. It is more than a weapon. It is a message. It tells the West that Russia's strategic patience has expired and that its deterrence posture will now match rhetoric with deployment. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In Europe, the age of hunkering down under ambiguous pledges and the hypothetical nuclear doctrinaire is soon ending. These missiles will cause a lot of debate as they will re-emerge; the demands of missile defence will again erupt and could possibly enhance a new gap between the United States and its European allies. The beneficiary of the arms industry bigwigs from the US. The governments could even host systems that they cannot control, bringing them into close vicinity of the front line of a dispute they hardly control. A Fractured Deterrence Landscape The implications stretch beyond Nato. The Asia-Pacific, with already turbulence in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, may now experience the same deployment by the United States and its allies, which will result in a response by the Chinese and Russians. The logic of deterrence is again becoming regional, volatile, and increasingly unstable. Missiles once banned for their destabilising characteristics are now being celebrated for their supposed deterrent value. This inversion of logic reflects a broader breakdown in the global security consensus. Deterrence has changed with technology and the weaponisation of all instruments of power. It is no longer shaped by treaties or sanctions. It is shaped by self-interests, domestic politics, and strategic ambiguity. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD But ambiguity works both ways. It invites miscalculation, encourages brinkmanship, and reduces decision time. In a world where hypersonic systems can reach targets in minutes and where communication lines are increasingly frail, the risk is not just escalation. The risk is unintentional war. The Vanishing Safety Net Arms control was never about eliminating weapons. It was about reducing the risk that weapons would be used by mistake. Treaties created transparency, limited suspicion, and opened lines of dialogue. Their absence now creates exactly the opposite. With New Start nearing expiry and no negotiations in sight, we are entering uncharted territory. The last major arms control agreement between the world's two largest nuclear powers will soon disappear. The verification mechanisms, data sharing, and mutual inspections it provided will vanish with it. What comes next is not just an arms race. It is a race without rules. Even in the depths of the Cold War, there were rules. There were hotlines. There were backchannels. Most of that architecture is dismantled or at least ignored today. The planet is widely over-polarised, weaponised and technologically displaced to engage in diplomacy that does not give visible, immediate benefits. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD That void has consequences. As states pursue new missile technologies, autonomous delivery systems, and dual-use platforms, the threshold for use narrows. Political leaders will face choices under pressure, with incomplete information, and very little time. Strategic Calm or Strategic Collapse There remains a narrow window for reengagement. The absence of treaties does not mean the absence of diplomacy. But diplomacy must now be pursued under far more difficult conditions. Trust is scarce. Political incentives are misaligned. Domestic constituencies in many countries have become more nationalistic, less trusting of international commitments, and more drawn to rhetoric than restraint. The choice facing the major powers is clear. Meditations are an old part of architecture that is dismantled or forgotten today. The world is now too busy, too polarised, and technologically divorced to buy into the diplomacy that does not deliver instant outcomes. The choice can only be that of either returning to the table and designing a new arms control architecture, befitting the technologies of our time, or walking in the path of competitive deployments, provocative signalling, and blind escalation. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The second direction is a world of a constant state of crisis, where each exercise of the military is interpreted as preparations for war and where logic fails to test deterrence but instead instils fear. Conclusion: The Age of Illusions Is Over The scrapping of Russia's missile moratorium is a mirror to the world. It reflects a broader breakdown in international security governance. It tells us that deterrence is being recalibrated not through dialogue, but through deployment. This is not a Cold War, which did connote restraint, symmetry, and discipline. This is more chaotic, unpredictable, and penetrated by new technologies that do not respond to a traditional control regime and ignite a miscalculation in milliseconds. Until the global community invests in diplomacy and in norms and new templates of strategic stability, the coming years could be characterised not by peace through power but by crisis through volatile rivalry. The missiles are reappearing. What remains is the world that will have to choose what future it wants to live in and what kind of future they are prepared to risk. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD The author is former Director General, Mechanised Forces. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views.
Kuwait Times
4 days ago
- Politics
- Kuwait Times
Russia hints at deploying mid-range missiles after ending INF moratorium
Kyiv buries soldier's wife and daughters killed in Russian attack MOSCOW: Russia said on Tuesday that it would no longer place any limits on where it deploys intermediate-range missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking a day after Russia said it was lifting what it called a unilateral moratorium on deploying intermediate-range missiles, saying this was a forced response to moves by the US and its allies. 'Russia no longer has any restrictions on this matter, Russia no longer considers itself limited by anything,' Peskov told a daily briefing. 'Russia considers itself entitled, if necessary, to take appropriate measures, to take appropriate steps.' Western security analysts said the 'moratorium', in fact, was long dead, if it had ever existed, but the Russian announcement was intended as an aggressive signal to the West at a time of high tension over the war in Ukraine. 'It sends a message to Europe: don't forget that we've got these missiles,' Nikolai Sokov, a former Soviet and Russian arms control negotiator, said in a telephone interview. 'The whole idea is really to get Europeans to think more about what they plan to do, or to kind of cool them down.' Sokov said Russia's announcement was a formality given its deployment of a new intermediate-range hypersonic missile called the Oreshnik, which it test-fired at Ukraine last November. President Vladimir Putin said last week that the Oreshnik had gone into serial production and been delivered to the armed forces. He has said it will also be deployed in Belarus, a Russian ally which borders three NATO countries. Military analysts say it could be fired with either conventional or nuclear warheads. As the Cold War neared its end, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed a landmark treaty in 1987 to scrap all ground-based shorter-range and intermediate-range (INF) nuclear and conventional weapons, defined as those with ranges between 500 km and 5,500 km. But the pact, seen at the time as a sign of easing tensions between the rival superpowers, unraveled over time as relations deteriorated. The United States withdrew from the treaty in 2019 during Donald Trump's first presidency, citing alleged violations that Russia denied. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, the United States said last year it would start deployment in Germany from 2026 of weapons including SM-6s and Tomahawks, previously placed mainly on ships, and new hypersonic missiles. These are conventional systems but some could also, in theory, be fitted with nuclear tips, and security experts say Russian planning would have to allow for that possibility. Gerhard Mangott, a Russia expert at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said the planned deployments of INF missiles in Europe by both NATO countries and Russia signaled a looming arms race. If one side fired such a missile, the other would have only minutes to respond. 'In central Europe, the warning time will be reduced to about four to five minutes, so this makes an unintended nuclear escalation much more likely,' he said in a phone interview. Since the start of the Ukraine war, Russia has delivered numerous warnings to the West not to intervene directly and risk a nuclear war. Meanwhile, men in military uniform shouldered the three white coffins out of a schoolyard in Kyiv on Tuesday, carrying a Ukrainian mother and her two children killed by the Russians to be buried. Residents held each other and wept as they bid a final farewell to their neighbors, who died at dawn on Friday, when a barrage of Russian drones and missiles pounded the Ukrainian capital for hours. Across a leafy park next to the school, flowers, toys, and portraits of those killed were laid beneath the remains of a nine-storey residential building gutted in the attack, which killed at least 31 people. 'It is difficult to imagine the grief of our brother, who lost two little daughters and his beloved wife in an instant,' said the military unit of Igor Gumeniuk, the serviceman whose family was buried. Local media reported that Irina and her children Anastassia, 13, and Alina, 10, had fled the fighting in the eastern Donetsk region - where Russia has concentrated its firepower - before settling in Kyiv. — Agencies
AllAfrica
4 days ago
- Politics
- AllAfrica
Global risk rises as Russia walks away from nuclear pact
Russia has announced it will no longer uphold its obligations under the intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty, signed by the Soviet Union and the United States in December 1987. The decision has raised questions about the future of nuclear deterrence and the danger of global nuclear proliferation. The timing of this announcement from the Kremlin must be considered. It was just days after a spat on social media between the US president, Donald Trump, and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a strong ally of Vladimir Putin. Responding to the US president's threats to punish Russia for its war in Ukraine, Medvedev took to X on July 28 to warn Trump that: 'Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.' Medvedev added: 'Don't go down the Sleepy Joe road!' Trump responded by announcing that the US would redeploy two of its nuclear submarines into closer striking distance with Russia. Russia's decision also comes just three days before the deadline of August 8 set by Trump for Russia to agree to a ceasefire in its war with Ukraine. It's also important to remember that, while the Russian withdrawal from the INF treaty is attracting attention now, the US withdrew from the same treaty in August 2019, during Trump's first presidency. So it's tempting to see all this as diplomatic posturing. However, when it comes to nuclear weapons – and given the rising global tensions – such moves must be taken seriously. The INF treaty was part of a series of agreements between the US and Soviet Union that began with the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of 1972 and 1979. These led to agreements to reduce the strategic weapons held by both sides, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and ballistic missile defences. This was then followed in 1987 by the INF treaty, which was struck between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Both sides agreed to reduce their stockpile of ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of between 500km to 5,500km (an entire category of nuclear weapons). They also put in place provisions for inspection to ensure both were keeping to the agreement. Thanks to the treaty, 2,692 missiles were eliminated. Despite these agreements, there remain significant stockpiles of nuclear weapons, with Russia and the US the most heavily armed nuclear powers. The size of their stockpiles is difficult to assess with complete accuracy, but the latest estimate by the non-profit Arms Control Association is that Russia is the most heavily armed nuclear power with 5,580 warheads, while the US maintains 5,225. Both powers operate what is known as the 'nuclear triad' of air, land and sea-launched systems. Russia's decision to withdraw from the INF treaty only concerns ground-based missile systems, which in 1987 had the capability of striking targets in Europe within a short period of time. Air- or sea-launched nuclear weapons were not seen at the time as a major concern to European security, so were not covered by the treaty. The other remaining non-proliferation treaty, New Start, which limits the US and Russia's total number of deployed strategic missiles, warheads and launchers, does cover air and sea-launched weapons. However, its future is also in doubt. Russia claims to still abide by the central limits of the agreement, despite having suspended official participation in February 2023. But the deal is due to expire in February 2026, and there are real concerns about whether it will be possible for new negotiations to take place, given the Russo-Ukrainian War and the current state of relations between Washington and Moscow. There is also currently no treaty that covers the number of tactical nuclear weapons a nation can hold. These are designed to be used on the battlefield (rather than against long-range targets) and, as they have never been deployed, it is not clear what damage they could do to a nation's own forces as well as the enemy. This raises interesting questions with regard to the proximity of NATO members to Ukraine and Russia. In May 2025, Trump announced a funding package of US$175 billion for the development of a new 'Golden Dome' defensive system that he said would render Russian strategic nuclear weapons redundant. Critics have pointed out that the US attempted something similar before without success, the Reagan-era 'Star Wars' defense system, which ended up being scrapped as too expensive. Missile defense systems against nuclear weapons do exist, such as the US ground-based midcourse defense system, which aims to track and shoot down incoming nuclear missiles. But these have never actually been tested in operational conditions. So the extent to which they provide guaranteed protection against every nuclear warhead is not known. Russia's decision to end compliance with the INF treaty should be viewed by the West with a great deal of concern. But it should also be seen in the context of previous Russian statements about its nuclear arsenal and willingness to use it, as well as the recent changes to the country's nuclear doctrine to make it easier for Russia to use these weapons. The Kremlin has made several changes to this doctrine since it started the war in Ukraine, usually to warn Kyiv's Western allies of the potential consequences of supplying more powerful and advanced weapons for use against Russia. The true power of nuclear weapons in the 21st century is not necessarily their awesome destructive capacity, but the way that awesome destructive capacity can be used by nuclear-armed states to maneuver and protect their political power. Matthew Powell is teaching fellow in strategic and air power studies, University of Portsmouth This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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First Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- First Post
From deterrence to danger: How Trump policy is fuelling global nuclear risks
With a slew of decisions over many years, US President Donald Trump has raised the risk of a nuclear catastrophe to the highest level in years, undoing decades of nuclear arms reduction and non-proliferation efforts. read more A Dongfeng-41 intercontinental strategic nuclear missiles group formation marches to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in Beijing, on October 1, 2019 (Photo: Shen Shi/Imagine China/Reuters) In the latest episode of dangerous nuclear sabre-rattling, Russia on Monday ended the moratorium on the deployment of nuclear-capable intermediate range missiles. The development came days after US President Donald Trump deployed nuclear submarines near Russian waters in response to threats of war from Dmitry Medvedev, a top ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. With such back and forth actions over the past years, often triggered by impulsive decision-making of Trump, decades of nuclear arms reduction and nuclear non-proliferation efforts are being undone and the world is now closest that it has been to a nuclear catastrophe in decades. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD It's not just that nuclear powers like the United States, Russia, and China, that are building more nuclear weapons and modernising delivery platforms. But more countries, such as those traditionally under the US security umbrella in Europe and East Asia, are considering developing own nuclear weapons as well. While every country, whether Poland in Europe or South Korea in Asia, has its own rationale, the reason underpinning all such pursuits is Trump's disruption of the international world order that he began in his first term. As a result, the likes of Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and even Japan, conversations around the development of a nuclear weapon are no longer taboo. His mistaken strategy of 'maximum pressure' had already put Iran on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon, necessitating the three-war earlier this year. Trump & Putin flex nuclear muscles Over the past two weeks, the war of words between the United States and Russia finally led to real-world consequences. Since the launch of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin and his top allies like Medvedev had frequently invoked nuclear weapons. Medvedev frequently threatened Western capitals with nuclear strikes over their support of Ukraine. Last month, Medvedev finally overstepped with his personal feud with Putin on X. After he threatened the United States with a direct war, Trump ordered the deployment of two nuclear submarines near Russia. Days later, Russia responded by withdrawing from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Trump had already withdrawn the United States from the INF in his first term in 2019. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Under the treaty, which was originally signed in 1987 between the United States and Soviet Union, the two countries had agreed to ban and gradually dismantle intermediate- and short-range nuclear missiles between the range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres. Trump kills arms control treaties The INF is not the only arms control treaty that Trump has quit. In 2020, Trump withdrew the United States from the Open Skies Treaty with Russia, which allowed the two countries to fly over each other's territories with sensor equipment to assure that none of them were preparing for conflict. In his usual hubris, Trump had said that he would make new treaties with Russia for INF and Open Skies. Those deals, of course, never happened. Instead, in 2023, Russia quit the New START treaty, which was the last remaining arms control agreement with the United States. Under the New START treaty signed in 2010, which succeeded the Moscow Treaty of 2002, the two countries agreed to 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and up to 800 delivery platforms of various types. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Trump nudges friends & foes alike towards nukes With his actions, Trump has consistently nudged allies and adversaries alike towards nuclear weapons since his first term. In the first term, Trump withdrew the United Stats from the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 and applied the 'maximum pressure' strategy. While his idea was to pressure Iran into negotiating a new deal that purportedly favoured the United States, it turned out to be a spectacular failure and pushed Iran towards the brink of developing a nuclear weapon. Israel used Iran's near-nuclear weapons status as a pretext for war earlier this year that eventually dragged the United States into the conflict as well. As Trump has virtually withdrawn the longstanding security commitment to Europe under Nato's collective defence principle out of his friendship with Putin and has threatened to abandon Asian allies like Japan and South Korea as well, there is anxiety in these countries that their adversaries —Russia in Europe and China and North Korea in Asia— could use the US abandonment as an encouragement for a more muscular policy or even pursue outright attacks and invasions. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Such concerns have led to real conversations in countries like Poland, South Korea, and Japan about developing nuclear weapons as ultimate deterrence. In West Asia, Saudi Arabia is believed to have similar discussions as well.
