Russia has withdrawn from a Cold War-era treaty banning short- and medium-range nuclear missiles, while warning the West to "expect further steps" at a time when tensions are rising.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the country's Security Council, blamed NATO countries for pushing Moscow towards this decision.
"The statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry on the lifting of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of the anti-Russian policy of NATO countries. This is a new reality that all our adversaries will have to face. Expect further steps," he wrote in a post on the 'X' platform.
Medvedev, who has exchanged criticism online with US President Donald Trump, did not provide details about what these steps entailed.
But his warning comes just days after Trump said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to move closer to Russia in response to threats from Moscow.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, eliminated an entire class of ground-launched missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 km.
The US withdrew from the agreement in 2019, accusing Russia of violating its terms, a charge Moscow has vehemently denied. Since then, Russia has pledged not to deploy such weapons unless Washington does so first.
The destruction of the INF Treaty has fueled fears of a repeat of a Cold War-era European missile crisis, when the US and the Soviet Union both deployed intermediate-range missiles on the continent in the 1980s.
Such weapons are seen as particularly destabilizing because they take less time to reach their targets than intercontinental ballistic missiles, leaving no time for decision-makers and increasing the possibility of a global nuclear conflict due to a false launch warning. (A2 Televizion)
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