MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia may take extra steps in the area of nuclear deterrence if the United States deploys intermediate and short-range missiles in Europe and Asia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the state news agency RIA in an interview.
RIA referred to US plans, announced in April, to deploy missiles in the Indo-Pacific region in response to what Washington sees as increasing Chinese militarization.
Such deployments would have previously been banned under the historic 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, from which the United States formally withdrew in 2019 after saying Moscow was violating the agreement, an accusation that the Kremlin denied it.
Moscow has long warned that it would abandon a moratorium it proposed after the treaty’s expiration on the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles if Washington went ahead with plans to deploy such missiles in Asia and Europe.
Lavrov told RIA that Russia may also have to take other measures.
“We do not exclude additional measures in the sphere of nuclear deterrence, because our command centers and the locations of our nuclear forces will be within range of advanced American missiles,” Lavrov said.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
