Russia ends cold-war nuclear treaty after Trump withdrawal

Bloomberg

Russia withdrew from a landmark 1987 nuclear disarmament treaty as President Vladimir Putin signaled he’s open to new talks, the Kremlin said, a day after Donald Trump announced the US is pulling out of the agreement citing years of Russian violations.
Putin disclosed the plan to suspend the Ronald Reagan-Mikhail Gorbachev agreement during a working meeting on Saturday with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, according to the Kremlin.
Russia is open to further negotiations and promised a “mirror answer” to Trump, Putin said, without elaborating, according to the Kremlin. Putin said the country also is suspending work on a hypersonic ground-based rocket of medium range. China urged both nations to resolve their differences through talks.
Trump said that the US was suspending its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, starting the clock for withdrawal six months from now, unless Russia “comes back into compliance by destroying all of its violating missiles, launchers, and associated equipment.” The suspension represents another flashpoint in US-Russia relations and another repudiation by Trump of international agreements, from the nuclear deal with Iran to the international climate-change accord. Friday’s action had been all but guaranteed after Trump set a 60-day deadline two months ago for Russia to destroy all of its ground-launched cruise missiles, known as 9M729s.
“The United States has fully adhered to the INF Treaty for more than 30 years, but we will not remain constrained by its terms while Russia misrepresents its actions,” Trump said in a statement. “We cannot be the only country in the world unilaterally bound by this treaty, or any other.”
Russia has denied violating the INF treaty, accusing the US of breaking its terms and warning that withdrawal from the Cold War-era accord signed by the Soviet Union would trigger a new arms race.Putin said his country should not and will not be drawn into the expensive arms race, but left open the door for negotiations.“We will wait until our partners are ripe in order to conduct an equal and meaningful dialogue with us on this important topic—both for us and for our partners, and for the whole world,” he said.
He said the US statement about continuing research and development work means “we will do the same.”

‘Key Pillar’
That fear was echoed by analysts and Democratic lawmakers, who agreed that the Russian missiles pose a threat but said the administration appeared to have no strategy for how to constrain it. “Russia’s brazen noncompliance with this treaty is deeply concerning, but discarding a key pillar of our nonproliferation security framework creates unacceptable risks,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
“Of course, if the US withdraws from the treaty, Russia won’t continue to observe it unilaterally,” said Frants Klintsevich, a member of the Defense Committee in the upper house of Russia’s parliament. “The US is pulling out in order to legitimize putting its missiles in Europe. Well, we have what we need to re-target, such as sea-based missiles,” he said.
The US has no immediate plans to deploy new missiles to Europe when the withdrawal takes effect in August, according to two administration officials involved in the deliberations who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. It would take considerable time to test, purchase and deploy such missiles, and the administration currently is only considering non-nucl-
ear, conventional options, the officials said.
Written notification to Russia and other Soviet-successor states was to be delivered on Saturday, according to the administration officials, who said there’s little optimism that Russia will destroy its missiles as demanded.