The demand of the special representative of the US president to remove Russian missiles from Europe, which are allegedly placed there, is not justified by anything, said Konstantin Sivkov, a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences. He stated this in an interview with NSN.
"A ridiculous statement, if only simply because both the Americans and we have withdrawn from this treaty, it does not exist. The main question is: on what basis does he refer to it? In addition, these missiles are not related to the INF Treaty for the reason that they have an operational range, their range is less than 500 km," Sivkov said.
Washington is making such statements to create a "moral, psychological and political base" for the deployment of its missiles in Europe, the expert said.
"This is the first step, then a large-scale campaign will follow to accuse Russia of destabilizing the situation by deploying Iskander missiles in Europe. On this basis, hysteria will be raised and it will be stated that as a response to the Russian threat, it is necessary to deploy medium-range missiles in Europe. Because European countries now do not want to deploy American missiles on their territory," Sivkov concluded.
On October 14, Jeffrey Eberhardt, the US President's special representative for nuclear nonproliferation, demanded that Russia remove the missiles allegedly stationed there from Europe, calling it a violation of the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF). So Eberhardt answered the question about how the administration of US President Joe Biden treats the initiative of Russian leader Vladimir Putin to impose moratoriums on the deployment of medium-range and shorter-range missiles in Europe.
In February 2019, the United States accused Russia of non-compliance with the provisions of the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-range Missiles due to the presence of the 9M729 missile, whose flight range allegedly exceeds permissible norms, and began the procedure for withdrawing from the treaty. Moscow rejected these accusations and expressed readiness to demonstrate the missile that raised questions, but the United States did not meet them halfway.
