Russian President Vladimir Putin offered another bold proposal, yesterday, offering to refrain from deploying 9M729 cruise missiles—the very missile that the U.S. used as the excuse to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty—in European Russia, on the condition of reciprocal steps by the NATO countries. In a statement published on the Kremlin website (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64270), Putin reaffirmed the Russian view that the U.S. pullout from the treaty “a serious mistake, which increases the risks of triggering a missile arms race, rise of confrontational potential and sliding into an uncontrolled escalation.” He continued: “Under these circumstances, active efforts are required to reduce the deficit of trust and to strengthen regional and global stability, as well as to lower the risks arising from misunderstandings and disagreements in the missile sphere.”
Therefore, “In this context, we reiterate our commitment to the moratorium earlier declared by the Russian Federation on the deployment of ground-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles until U.S.-manufactured missiles of similar classes appear in the respective regions,” Putin said. “We also believe that our call to NATO countries to consider the possibility of declaring a reciprocal moratorium remains relevant.”
Putin proposed verification measures to include Russian inspection of the Mk_41 vertical launchers installed at the NATO Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense sites in Poland and Romania to ensure that they cannot be used to fire Tomahawk missiles in return for the NATO inspection the 9M729 missile deployments at Russian military facilities in the Kaliningrad Region.
