The United States will suspend its compliance with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia on Saturday and will withdraw from the agreement within six months if Moscow does not end its alleged breach of the pact, said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo , this Friday (1st).
Russia denies breaching the treaty, which bans both sides from installing short and medium-range ground missiles in Europe.
Washington accuses Russia of failing to comply with the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, claiming that the new Novator 9M729 Russian missile, called by the SSC-8 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), violates the pact, which prohibits the two sides to install short range and intermediate ground missiles in Europe.
What does Russia say?
Russia denies that the missile's reach excludes it from the treaty by accusing the United States of inventing a pretext to break away from an agreement that Washington wants to abandon anyway to develop new missiles and rejecting the US requirement to destroy the new missile.
"No evidence, satellite photo ... testimony" proving a possible violation by Russia was presented by the Americans, insisted Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy on the public television channel Rossia.
In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the Kremlin "has a right to respond" to the US measure and is "surprised" by the Trump government's decision. The Russian government also accused the Americans of using a "strategy to circumvent international obligations."
It is not a question of "Russia's fault ... it is the United States' strategy to circumvent its international legal obligations in different areas," Zakharova said.
"They said, 'We do not have questions (to do), you just have to destroy everything,'" she said, noting that Russia was always available for a "dialogue on the INF treaty."
Frustrated negotiations
On Thursday, Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Andrea Thompson held the latest talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in Beijing before the expiration of the 60-day deadline the United States to Moscow again to respect the treaty.
Andrea and Ryabkov, who were behind the scenes of the meeting of nuclear powers, said later that the two countries could not reconcile the differences.
In an interview, Andrea said Washington, by failing to follow the pact earlier this week, would allow the US military to immediately begin developing its own larger-range missiles if they wanted to do so, increasing the possibility that they might be installed on European soil.
"We can do this (suspend our treaty obligations) on February 2," she told Reuters, before Pompeo's announcement.
The formal exit of the agreement, once informed, takes six months. "Then we can also conduct research and development and work on systems that we could not use because we are obeying the treaty."
