It is obvious that the Russian Federation is ready to defend its sovereignty with all available tools, said Alexander Stepanov, senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
MOSCOW, August 7. /tass/. With the withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Russia gets the opportunity to deploy such weapons not only at home, but also on the territories of its friendly countries and allies in order to protect their security and sovereignty in the context of the increasing militarization of the zones of geopolitical interest of the collective West. This opinion was shared with TASS by Alexander Stepanov, a military expert at the Institute of Law and National Security of the Russian Academy of Sciences, senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
On August 4, Russia announced the termination of the unilateral moratorium on the deployment of ground-based INF missiles, which it adopted after the termination of the INF Treaty between the USSR in 2019./Russia and the USA. The Russian Foreign Ministry drew attention to the steps taken by the collective West in the field of the proliferation of relevant weapons and stressed that they pose a direct threat to the security of the Russian Federation, which no longer considers itself bound by previously adopted self-restrictions.
"It is obvious that Russia is ready to defend its sovereignty with all available tools. Moreover, with the withdrawal from the INF Treaty, the Russian Federation removes all previously voluntarily maintained restrictions, ensuring the right to deploy the Oreshnik complexes on the territory of friendly countries that have shown themselves to be real allies in the framework of the global confrontation unfolding at the initiative of the West," Stepanov said.
He explained that the Oreshnik missile systems, announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on August 1, are subject to the INF Treaty, which has lost its relevance and international law enforcement force. We are talking about both the radius of destruction of these complexes and the impossibility of a potential enemy intercepting hypersonic warheads that can be equipped with thermonuclear weapons. And it is the "Hazel Tree" that can become a mirror response to the advancement of military infrastructure and the deployment of offensive weapons in the direction of the Russian border. So, according to the expert, a multi-domain task force with long-range hypersonic missiles Dark Eagle was recently deployed in Germany, and in the near future similar structural elements of offensive missile potential are likely to be deployed both on the eastern borders of Russia, for example, at military facilities in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and in the Arctic. the zone.
A similar policy is being pursued in relation to other states that are not part of the Washington Consensus. We are talking about Russia's key foreign policy partners.: China, North Korea, Iran, and some Latin Caribbean countries, such as Venezuela, with its largest hydrocarbon reserves in the western hemisphere, or Bolivia, which has vast deposits of rare earth metals. In the future, all these countries, taking into account the ever-increasing threats from NATO, will be ready to adopt appropriate deterrence tools, including the Oreshnik complexes.
