Russian general: withdrawal of Soviet troops from Germany was a 'state treachery'
The decision of the leadership of the USSR to end the arms race with the USA and withdraw Soviet troops from Germany was a state treachery and must receive an official assessment, said the chairman of the defense committee, the former commander of the Russian Airborne Forces Vladimir Shamanov at the plenary meeting of the State Duma on Friday.
Shamanov said that Mikhail Gorbachev, together with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev, Politburo member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, betrayed national interests by signing an agreement on the elimination of medium-range missiles which prohibited deploying and targeting these missiles at Europe.
“By 1991, Russia destroyed 1846 missiles while Americans destroyed only 846. Only God knows where Gorbachev and his comrades were hurrying to,” Shamanov said.
“The same way we left Germany. While it takes Americans from 5 to 10 years to take out one squadron, we threw a group of troops out, we threw them out into an open field to please Americans and then fulfill their wish.”
“National traitors must receive a state assessment,” Shamanov concluded.
In his book “Life and Reforms”, Gorbachev wrote in 1995 that by signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, he managed to “take the pistol away from the country’s temple” and pointed to the huge and, in his opinion, unjustified costs associated with the production and maintenance of the arsenal of medium and shorter range missiles.
In November, US President Donald Trump said that the United State planned to withdraw from the INF Treaty, citing the fact that Russia has been violating it for years.