Russia abandoning intermediate missile moratorium in chilling warning to West

is poised to abandon a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles, stripping all that remains major Cold-War era arms control agreements with the United States.

In an interview with ‘s RIA news agency published on Sunday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the step would have to be taken because the US has deployed such weapons in various regions around the world, reports.

“We are assessing the situation on the basis of an analysis of the destabilising actions of the United States and NATO in the strategic sphere and, accordingly, the evolution of the threats that arise from them,” Lavrov said.

“Today it is clear that, for example, our moratorium on the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles is no longer practically viable and will have to be abandoned,” he continued.

“The U.S. has arrogantly ignored the warnings of and and in practice has moved on to the deployment of weapons of this class in various regions of the world.”

The latest development comes amid fears that and the US, the two biggest nuclear powers, could be entering a new arms race along with China.

The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, was signed by former US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, in a major breakthrough that marked the the first time the two powers had agreed to reduce the size of their nuclear arsenals.

It also saw a whole category of nuclear weapons elimated, and both countries employing extensive on-site inspections for verification, as per .

As a result of the treaty, the US and what was then the Soviet Union, destroyed 2,692 short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles the by the time the implementation deadline of June 1, 1991.

President formally withdrew from the United States from the treaty citing long-running claims from Washington that Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation which the Kremlin strongly denied.

The United States publicly blamed ‘s development of the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile for its departure from the treaty.

subsequently said production of such missiles would not be restarted as long as the US did not deploy missiles abroad.

Last month, unleashed a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik”, or Hazel Tree, at , with Putin saying the strike was a direct response to Ukrainian attacks on using missiles supplied by the US and the UK.