&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "What is Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and why did Russia leave it? WION Explains")
On Monday (August 4), Russia announced its exit from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with America. A report by the RT cited a statement from the foreign ministry of the country that said Moscow believes that the conditions required to maintain the 1987 INF Treaty with the US have "disappeared".
"The Russian Foreign Ministry notes the disappearance of conditions for maintaining the unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar weapons and is authorised to state that Russia no longer considers itself bound by the corresponding self-imposed restrictions previously adopted," the statement read.
What is INF Treaty?
In 1987, former US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader of that time, Mikhail Gorbachev, agreed upon a treaty - the INF Treaty. It was a deal to ban ground-launched missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres (311 to 3,418 miles). As per the Arms Control Association, the INF treaty was the first time that both Russia and the United States agreed to bring down their nuclear arsenals. As a result of the deal, both nations destroyed around 2,692 short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles by the treaty's implementation deadline of June 1, 1991.
The treaty was the post-Cold War arms control architecture. It was technically a nuclear arms control treaty, even if it applied to conventional ones. Russia cited US action, specifically the deployment of Typhoon missile launchers with Tomahawk cruise missiles in the Philippines and Dark Eagle hypersonic systems used in Australia during the Talisman Sabre drills. Notably, Russia has already withdrawn from the New START (2010) treaty in February 2023, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in November 2023. The cancellation of the treaty marks a pivotal moment and the restart of a Cold War-style arms race.
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Why did Russia leave the treaty?
Russia's exit came days after the US President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of two nuclear submarines to "be positioned in the appropriate regions" near Russia. Earlier, the Russian President Vladimir Putin
warned that the collapse of the INF Treaty would substantially erode the global security framework.
Dmitry Medvedev, responding to the announcement by the Russian Foreign Ministry, wrote on x, “This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps.”
