Russia calls US claims regarding missile treaty 'flawed'
In an interview for Kommersant , Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that the United States’ claims that Russia has violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) are flawed.
“We have explained to the Americans where we see the flaw in their position, especially as it concerns the claim about Russia, and we are still counting on more constructive and result-interested treatment of the questions we consistently raise,” he said.
Commenting on the US’s plans to develop a ground-based nuclear cruise missile, Ryabkov said that the Foreign Ministry had drawn attention to the relevant provision in the draft budget. According to him, the Foreign Ministry is concerned about the United States’ “true intentions”. Ryabkov observed that the Russian department understands “the logic of the formulations documented in the draft budget for defensive purposes”. He added that in this way the US can claim that the plans to construct cruise missiles meet the requirements of the INF Treaty, and that there are no violations.
Ryabkov also emphasized that Russia remains committed to the treaty, and is “determined” to comply with it completely. “But if the Americans take steps which amount to effectively scrapping the treaty, our response will be, as President Vladimir Putin said, immediate and mirror,” the deputy foreign minister noted.
The representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also pointed out that Russia has its own “claims” concerning the US, including the so-called “target missiles”. Ryabkov explained that they are used to test anti-missile defense systems, but their characteristics are identical to intermediate and short range missiles. “For us, the Americans’ arguments that these targets are used to test anti-missile defense systems are unconvincing,” the deputy minister said. He noted that in order to carry out “proper tests”, the target for the anti-missile defense systems should be as similar as possible to the objects which would be used in attacks.
Ryabkov said that while testing anti-missile defense systems, the US is also testing intermediate and short-range missiles, which “is a violation of the treaty”. “No country in the world produces and uses systems like what the US uses – contrary to the treaty’s requirements,” he said.
The US military budget for 2018 envisages the allocation of $58 million to “developing a program to create ground-based intermediate-range missiles”. The document states that the missiles will be developed in response to what Washington considers Russia’s violation of the INF Treaty. The US says that the parameters of the new missiles will not violate the treaty, which prohibits its parties from having missiles with a range between 500 and 5500 kilometers.
At the end of June it came out that a group of Congressmen had sent the Trump Presidential Administration a proposal concerning the US’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty. The authors of the letter motivated this by claiming that Russia had ceased to comply with the treaty. Both the Department of State and the Pentagon responded negatively towards the proposal, saying that it constituted a risk to the disarmament process.