Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday said that Russia would be forced to target any European countries that agreed to host US nuclear missiles following Washington’s withdrawal from a landmark Cold war-era arms control treaty.
Speaking at a news conference after holding talks with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Putin said that he wanted to discuss what he called dangerous US plans to leave the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with US President Donald Trump.
The two leaders are scheduled to hold talks in Paris on Nov. 11.
Russia has said that Trump’s decision to quit the 1987 treaty, which eliminated both countries’ land-based short and intermediate-range ballistic missiles from Europe, is “dangerous.”
Trump has accused Russia of contravening the treaty, something that Moscow has denied, saying that Washington was the one contravening it.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton on Tuesday told Putin that Washington would press ahead with plans to quit the pact, despite objections from Russia and European countries.
Putin on Wednesday told reporters that Russia would have to respond in kind and would do so swiftly if the US were to quit the treaty.
“Answering your question directly, can we respond?” Putin said when asked what Russia would do if Trump made good on his pledge to leave the treaty. “We can, and it will be very fast and very effective.”
“If the United States does withdraw from the INF treaty, the main question is what they will do with these [intermediate-range] missiles that will once again appear,” Putin said.
“If they will deliver them to Europe, naturally our response will have to mirror this, and European countries that agree to host them, if things go that far, must understand that they are putting their own territory at risk of a possible counterstrike,” he added.
Putin said he did not understand why it was necessary to put Europe in such danger and it was a situation that Russia itself wanted to avoid if possible.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday accused Russia of breaching the treaty, but said that he did not believe the Russian threat would lead to new deployments of US missiles in Europe.
The EU has described the treaty as a cornerstone of European security, and urged Russia and the US to uphold it, but Stoltenberg did not encourage the US to stay in the treaty.
“I don’t foresee that allies will deploy more nuclear weapons in Europe as a response to the new Russian missile,” Stoltenberg told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
However, the 29 allies are assessing “the implications of the new Russian missile for our security,” he said.
Russia has the option of deploying intermediate-range missiles in its European exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, a move that would put a swath of Europe in range.
Putin said he feared the world might be about to slip into an arms race.
The fate of another arms control treaty between the US and Russia — the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty — which governs strategic nuclear missile launchers and is due to expire in 2021, is also unclear.
“If all this is dismantled, then nothing will be left when it comes to limiting the increase in arms,” Putin said. “And then the situation will be, in my view, extremely dangerous. All that will be left is an arms race.”
Additional reporting by AP
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS