U.S. believes Russia deployed new missile in treaty violation

REUTERS

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a signing ceremony following the talks with his Slovenian counterpart Borut Pahor at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, February 10, 2017. REUTERS/Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia has deployed a new cruise missile despite complaints by U.S. officials that it violates an arms control treaty banning ground-based U.S. and Russian intermediate-range missiles, a senior Trump administration official said on Tuesday.

 

Russia had secretly deployed the ground-launched SSC-8 cruise missile that Moscow has been developing and testing for several years, despite U.S. complaints that it violated sections of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, the official said, confirming a story first reported by the New York Times.

 

“We know that this is an old issue. The Russians have been building and testing these things in violation of the INF treaty going back to the Obama administration,” the official told Reuters, asking to remain anonymous to speak freely.

 

"The issue now is the things are deployed and it’s an even greater violation of the INF treaty,” the official added.

 

The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Times story.

 

The U.S. State Department concluded in a July 2014 arms control report that "the Russian Federation is in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 km to 5,500 km (310 miles to 3,420 miles), or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles."

 

Russia accused Washington of conducting "megaphone diplomacy" after the accusation was repeated by the State Department in 2015. Moscow also denied it had violated the INF treaty, which helped end the Cold War between the two countries.

 

The previous U.S. administration of President Barack Obama had protested in an attempt to persuade Moscow to correct the violation while the missile was still in the testing phase, the Trump administration official said.

 

Based on open-source information such as Russian bloggers, they were deployed in the central military district, the administration official said, adding: “We are reviewing it.”

 

Russia now has two battalions of the cruise missile, the Times report quoted administration officials as saying. One is located at Russia's missile test site at Kapustin Yar in the country's southeast.

 

The other cruise missile battalion has been located at an operational base elsewhere in Russia, the Times quoted one unidentified official as saying.

 

(Reporting by David Alexander and Steve Holland; Editing by Susan Heavey, Grant McCool and Lisa Shumaker)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-02-15

I think these treaties are meaningless. The US is 20 years behind schedule in destroying its chemical and biological weapons and shows no signs of doing anything in the future. One suspects that the Russians haven't destroyed theirs either.

8 hours ago, retarius said:

I think these treaties are meaningless. The US is 20 years behind schedule in destroying its chemical and biological weapons and shows no signs of doing anything in the future. One suspects that the Russians haven't destroyed theirs either.

I'm not quite sure what one has to do with the other but I'm curious where you're getting your numbers from? This is a hard topic to verify details as neither side seems to want to let the other know exactly what they are doing. As near as I can tell the U.S. has gotten rid of most if not all biological weapons and has destroyed approximately 90 % of their chemical weapons. I have no doubt that both sides will keep some of these weapons if for no other reason than to hedge their bets. Like the vast majority of my fellow veterans I hated the idea of having to possibly be ordered to use such weapons and even more so hated the thought of being on the receiving end of them.

 

Back to the topic at hand, I find the direction that Putin seems to be taking Russia very disturbing if not downright frightening.