Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said that the Russian Federation and the United States will discuss intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles (INF) in order to avoid an arms race. He made the corresponding statement at the annual meeting of the International Advisory Council of the Center for the Study of Nonproliferation Issues at the Middleberry Institute.
The text of the speech was published on October 25 on the diplomatic mission's Facebook page.
"We are not satisfied with the current state of affairs in this area [INF], and we want to understand what we need to do together [with the United States] in order to prevent a race of such weapons and prevent their deployment in any part of the globe," Antonov said.
According to him, in the context of discussing the issue of the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF), it is worth mentioning hypersonic non-nuclear weapons, strategic drones with an emphasis on those that are capable of solving strategic tasks.
Antonov recalled that his Western colleagues are aware of Russian proposals on readiness to "refrain from deploying the INF ... until the United States takes appropriate anti-Russian steps."
Earlier, on October 14, Jeffrey Eberhardt, the special representative of the US President for nuclear nonproliferation, demanded that the Russian Federation remove from Europe the missiles that are allegedly stationed there, since this goes against the INF Treaty. This is how the special representative answered the question about how the administration of US President Joe Biden treats the initiative of Russian leader Vladimir Putin to impose a moratorium on the deployment of medium-range and shorter-range missiles in Europe.
On March 12, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the possible deployment of American ground-based missiles in the Asia-Pacific region could lead to a new round of the arms race with unpredictable consequences.
The Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles was concluded between the USSR and the United States in 1987 and prohibited the two States from producing and deploying medium-range and shorter-range ballistic and cruise missiles.
In February 2019, Washington began the procedure for withdrawing from the INF Treaty, accusing Moscow of not fulfilling the points of the document due to the presence of the 9M729 missile, whose flight range allegedly exceeds the permissible norms. In the Russian Federation, these accusations were rejected and expressed readiness to demonstrate the missile that raised questions, but they did not meet halfway in the United States.
