Russia suspends INF weapons treaty

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill suspending the country's participation in a pivotal nuclear arms treaty.

Putin's decree, released on Wednesday, formalizes Russia's departure from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States following Washington's withdrawal from the pact this year.

The law, published on Russia's legal information website, became effective immediately.

The Russian State Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, passed the bill submitted by Putin on June 18 and the Federation Council, the upper chamber, endorsed it on June 26.

The US gave notice of its intention to withdraw from the INF treaty in February, setting the stage for it to terminate in six months unless Moscow returned to compliance. Russia has denied any breaches, and accused the US of violating the pact. Moscow followed Washington's example in February, also suspending its obligations under the treaty.

The INF treaty, signed by then-US president Ronald Reagan and then-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, both sides pledged to stop production, testing and deployment of land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

The intermediate-range weapons were seen as particularly destabilizing as they take a shorter time to reach their targets compared to the intercontinental ballistic missiles. That would leave practically no time for decision-makers to verify a launch, raising the likelihood of a global nuclear conflict over a false launch warning.

Putin has vowed that Russia will not be the first to deploy new intermediate-range missiles and warned the US against deploying new missiles in Europe, saying that Russia will retaliate by fielding new fast weapons that will take just as little time to reach their targets.

Agencies - Xinhua

(China Daily 07/05/2019 page11)