Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin sternly warned the US against deploying new missiles in Europe, saying on Wednesday that Russia will retaliate by fielding new weapons that will take just as little time to reach their targets.
While the Russian leader didn’t say what specific new weapons Moscow could deploy, his statement further raised the ante in tense relations with Washington.
Speaking in his state-of-the-nation address, Putin charged that the US has abandoned a key arms control pact to free up its hands to build new missiles and tried to shift the blame for the move to Russia. “Our American partners should have honestly said it instead of making unfounded accusations against Russia to justify their withdrawal from the treaty,” he said.
The US has accused Russia of breaching the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty by deploying a cruise missile that violates its limits - the accusations Moscow has rejected. The INF treaty banned production, testing and deployment of land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 km.
The intermediate-range weapons were seen as particularly destabilising as they take shorter time to reach their targets compared to the intercontinental ballistic missiles. That would leave practically no time for decision-makers, raising the likelihood of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning.
Putin reaffirmed that Russia will not be the first to deploy new intermediate-range missiles.
“They will only take 10-12 minutes to reach Moscow,” he said. “It’s a very serious threat to us, and we will have to respond.” He didn’t directly mention the US, but noted that the Russian response will be “asymmetrical” and involve new weapons will reach the enemy's decision-making centres just as quickly. “Russia will be forced to create and deploy new weapons that could be used not only against territories where a direct threat to us comes from, but also against the territories where decision-making centres directing the use of missile systems threatening us are located,” he said.
