"We will develop such weapons"
The United States will unilaterally withdraw from a bilateral treaty that was signed more than XNUMX years ago and banned a wide range of nuclear weapons and missiles, US President Donald Trump confirmed to reporters on Saturday.
The 1987 agreement on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was signed by then-US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington. It banned the production and development of missiles capable of carrying conventional or nuclear warheads with an active range of 500 to 5.500 kilometers, as well as their launchers.
Washington and Moscow have been accusing each other for years of violating the treaty.
"Russia has not complied with the agreement. "So we will put an end to the treaty and withdraw from it," said the Republican in Nevada, where he ran as a GOP candidate for the Senate. Asked what this means in practice, he replied "we will develop such weapons".
"It has been violated for many years," Trump said, referring to the INF and the leaders of Russia, the country that is seen as the successor to the USSR. "I do not know why (former US President Barack) Obama did not renegotiate it or leave it," he added.
"We will not let them violate the treaty and build weapons while we do not have the right. We remained committed to the agreement and implemented it. "But Russia unfortunately did not keep it," the tycoon repeated.
The US government denounces in particular the production and development by Moscow of the 9M729 missile system, which Washington believes has a range of more than 500 km, thus violating the INF.
The agreement, which called for a ban on the use of a series of missiles, put an end to the crisis triggered in the 1980s by the development of Soviet SS-20s targeting European capitals.
Trump made the announcement as US National Security Adviser John Bolton was in Moscow to "continue" the controversial dialogue that the US president began in July with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
He was scheduled to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev.
On Friday, the British Guardian newspaper wrote that it was Bolton himself who was pressuring the US president to withdraw the US from the INF. He is the one who is blocking any negotiations of the New START on strategic missiles, whose power expires in 2021 and Moscow wants to extend it.
Relations between Washington and Moscow are extremely strained, especially over allegations of Russian interference in US elections.
INF: A source close to the Russian Foreign Minister considers that the US "dreams" of a "monopoly world"
The decision by the United States to withdraw from the bilateral treaty on nuclear weapons and medium-range missiles, the INF, which was concluded with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, is motivated by Washington's "dream" of dominating alone. Worldwide, a source close to Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement today.
"The main motivation is the dream of a monopoly world. It'll become a reality; No, "the source told Russia's state-run RIA Novosti news agency, referring to a decision announced by US President Donald Trump to withdraw his country from the 1987 treaty, which barred the production and development of a wide range of medium-range missiles. their launchers.
Source RES-EIA