Russia will take a new step in the coming weeks regarding its nuclear weapons policy and the current agreement that still prevails towards the United States, known as the moratorium on the deployment of INF missiles (intermediate range nuclear). According to the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, his country will abandon the agreement, which was already abandoned by the US in 2019 under the mandate of Donald Trump.
“Today it is clear that, for example, our moratorium on the deployment of INF missiles is practically no longer viable and will have to be abandoned,” were Lavrov’s words to the Russian agency RIA Novosti.
These statements confirm what was an open secret, and definitively put an end to the arms control agreement that wasIt was in force since the Cold War, when the US and Russia in 1987, represented by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachevdecided to prohibit the development and use of ground-launched nuclear and conventional ballistic and cruise missiles with a range of between 300 and 3,400 miles.
The US withdrawal from the INF Treaty in 2019 was motivated by Washington’s accusation of Russia that Moscow had violated the agreement by developing the SSC-8, a 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile.
For its part, Russia opened a ‘truce’ “until US-made missiles of similar classes are deployed”which is what is currently known as your INF moratorium. However, as events unfolded, Lavrov argued that the US “arrogantly ignored the warnings from Russia and China and, In practice, it began to deploy weapons of this class in various regions of the world.
Systems that violate the Treaty by both
Furthermore, Moscow alleges that it was The US, who first violated the INF Treaty with the Aegis Ashore system, anti-ballistic missile defense system deployed in Europe and capable of sending cruise and long-distance missiles over Russia, something that was denied by Washington, which stated that said system “is only capable of launching defensive interceptor missiles”, something permitted by the treaty.
Later, specifically last April, the US acknowledged having deployed the Mid-Range Capability (MRC) missile system in the Philippines, capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of 1,600 km, which would have been a violation of the agreement if it still would have been in force.
Given this, Lavrov was frank and announced “the abandonment of the unilateral self-restrictions introduced by Russia after the withdrawal of the United States from the INF Treaty is inevitable” and confirmed the development of the ‘Oreshnik’ intermediate-range ballistic missile, supposedly used in an attack against Ukraine in November.
The development of these missiles, according to Putin, will occur on a massive scale, thanks, among other factors, to a very important ally for Russia such as Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, who has already confirmed that he will allow them to be deployed on his borders.
No dialogue between the US and Russia
With all these conditions on the table, for Russia, it is currently unfeasible to maintain any type of dialogue with the United States, due among other reasons to the “extreme anti-Russian” sentiment that exists on the part of Washington.
“Until the Americans abandon their current anti-Russian stance, we will not conduct any negotiations with them on arms control,” said Lavrov, who also recalled that the New START Treaty (last nuclear weapons treaty), which expires in February 2026, is still in effect, but it is unclear what will happen in just over a year.
