Moscow/Washington, August 6: Russia has formally withdrawn from its self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, warning that U.S. and NATO activities in Europe and the Asia-Pacific had rendered the restrictions untenable.
The announcement drew a sharp follow-up from former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who blamed NATO’s “anti-Russian policy” and warned of unspecified “further steps” by Moscow.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries’ anti-Russian policy,” Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Security Council, posted on the social media platform X. “This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps.”
Russia’s moratorium, in place since the United States’ 2019 withdrawal from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, had been contingent on reciprocal restraint from Washington. The treaty, signed in 1987 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, banned ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 km.
In its statement, the Foreign Ministry said that “conditions for maintaining a unilateral moratorium… have disappeared” as the U.S. proceeds with the deployment of land-based missiles in key strategic regions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov echoed the ministry’s assessment, saying in an earlier interview that the U.S. had ignored joint warnings from Moscow and Beijing and was actively stationing weapons once banned under the INF Treaty.
The latest escalation comes days after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed he had ordered two American nuclear submarines to be repositioned to “appropriate regions” following previous remarks by Medvedev regarding the risk of nuclear conflict between Washington and Moscow.
The Kremlin, responding for the first time to Trump’s comments, sought to play down the development. “American submarines are already on combat duty – this is a routine process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. “In general, we would not want to get involved in such a controversy and would not want to comment on it in any way.”
Peskov also urged restraint in language. “We believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric,” he added.
The growing tensions come as Trump has threatened new sanctions on Russia and on major buyers of Russian oil, including India and China, unless President Vladimir Putin agrees to a ceasefire in Ukraine by Friday.
Putin said last week that peace talks had made some progress, but emphasized that Russia retains battlefield momentum, suggesting no immediate change in Moscow’s position on the war.
