Russia Ends Its Moratorium on the Deployment of Intermediate-Range Missiles

Aug. 5—The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement Aug. 4 announcing that Russia no longer feels bound by the moratorium it adopted after President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. The treaty, signed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in 1987, banned all ground-launched missiles with ranges that fell between 500 and 5,500 km.

After the U.S. then withdrew from that agreement, Russia adopted a moratorium on its own deployment of such weapons, provided that the equivalent U.S. systems did not appear at locations within INF range of Russia.

Now, with U.S. missile systems with INF range beginning to appear in both Europe and the Western Pacific, “the conditions for maintaining a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar systems have ceased to exist,” stated today’s Foreign Ministry release. Therefore, “We are authorized to declare that the Russian Federation no longer considers itself bound by the previously adopted self-imposed restrictions,” the statement says.