Russia Ditches Moratorium on Deploying Short and Medium-Range Missiles

Russia no longer considers itself bound by a moratorium on the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

The U.S. withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty in 2019. Russia has said since then it would not deploy such weapons provided that Washington did not do so.  

However, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signaled last December that Moscow would have to respond to what he called “destabilizing actions” by the U.S. and NATO in the strategic sphere. 

“Since the situation is developing towards the actual deployment of U.S.-made land-based medium- and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian Foreign Ministry notes that the conditions for maintaining a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar weapons have disappeared,” the ministry said in a statement. 

Moscow urges caution on nuclear rhetoric  

Also on Monday, the Kremlin said that everyone should be “very, very careful” about nuclear rhetoric, responding to a statement by the U.S. President Donald Trump that he had ordered a repositioning of U.S. nuclear submarines. 

In its first public reaction to Trump’s comments, the Kremlin played down their significance and said it was not looking to get into a public argument with him. 

Trump said on Friday he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be moved to “the appropriate regions” in response to remarks from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev about the risk of war between the nuclear-armed adversaries. 

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‘You Will Be Left to Suffer and Die’: Rutte Warns Young Russians Against Fighting in Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte issued a stark appeal to young Russians not to fight in the war in Ukraine, saying they will be sent to the front with poor training, bad equipment and a high chance of being killed, wounded or abandoned. He backed his warning with NATO estimates that Russia is losing more than 30,000 soldiers a month – more in a single month than the Soviet Union lost during its entire 10-year war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

“In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty. This is an ongoing process, that’s the first thing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.  

“But in general, of course, we would not want to get involved in such a controversy and would not want to comment on it in any way,” he added. “Of course, we believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric.”