Nuke pact
\nRussia announces suspension of key Cold War arms treaty — one day after US made a similar move
\nour correspondent
\nMOSCOW
\nRussia has suspended the Cold War-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty after a similar move by the United States, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, also instructing the government not to initiate disarmament talks with Washington.
\nMoscow\u2019s relations with the West have been at their lowest over a number of issues, including Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine as well as allegations of it meddling with the presidential election in the US and being behind a nerve agent attack in Britain.
\nThe row over the INF treaty is yet another twist in Russia\u2019s worsening relations with the United States and the West on the whole.
\n\u201cThe American partners have declared that they suspend their participation in the deal, we suspend it as well,\u201d Putin said during a televised meeting with foreign and defense ministers.
\nThe United States announced on Friday it will withdraw from the INF treaty with Russia in six months unless Moscow ends what it says are violations of the landmark 1987 arms control pact.
\nPutin said Russia will start work on creating new missiles, including hypersonic ones, and told ministers not to initiate disarmament talks with Washington, accusing the US of being slow to respond to such moves.
\n\u201cWe have repeatedly, during a number of years, and constantly raised a question about substantitive talks on the disarmament issue, notably, on all the aspects,\u201d Putin said.
\n\u201cWe see, that in the past few years the partners have not supported our initiatives.\u201d
\nDuring the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also accused the United States of violating the INF and other arms deals, such as the non-proliferation treaty.
\nPutin said that Russia will not increase its military budget for the new weapons and it won\u2019t deploy its weapons in Europe and other regions unless the United States does so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nuke pact Russia announces suspension of key Cold War arms treaty — one day after US made a similar move our correspondent MOSCOW Russia has suspended the Cold War-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty after a similar move by the United States, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, also instructing the government not to initiate disarmament […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48885,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n