Putin warns US to be ready for the consequences if it deploys missiles

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday threatened to relaunch production of intermediate-range nuclear weapons if the United States confirmed its intention to deploy missiles to Germany or elsewhere in Europe.
The United States said on July 10 that it would start deploying long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 in preparation for a longer-term deployment that will include SM-6, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons.
In a speech to sailors from Russia, China, Algeria and India to mark Russian navy day in the former imperial capital of St Petersburg, Putin warned the United States that it risked triggering a Cold War-style missile crisis with the move.
“The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin said.
“If the United States carries out such plans, we will consider ourselves liberated from the unilateral moratorium previously adopted on the deployment of medium- and short-range strike capabilities,” Putin said, adding that now in Russia “the development of a number of such systems is in the final stages”.
“We will take mirror measures in deploying them, taking into account the actions of the US, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world,” the Russian president warned.
Such missiles, which can travel between 500 and 5,500km, were the subject of an arms control treaty signed by the US and the Soviet Union in 1987.
But both Washington and Moscow withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, each accusing the other of violations.
Russia subsequently said it would not restart production of such missiles as long as the United States did not deploy missiles abroad.
In early July, Washington and Berlin announced that the “episodic deployments” of long-range US missiles, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, to Germany would begin in 2026.
Putin said that “important Russian administrative and military sites” would fall within the range of such missiles that “could in the future be equipped with nuclear warheads, such that our territories would be within around 10 minutes” of a strike being launched.
The Russian president also mentioned that the US has deployed Typhon mid-range missile systems in Denmark and the Philippines in recent exercises.
Russian and US diplomats say their diplomatic relations are worse even that during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and both Moscow and Washington have urged de-escalation while both have made steps towards escalation.
Putin said that the United States was stoking tensions and had transferred Typhon missile systems to Denmark and the Philippines, and compared the US plans to the Nato decision to deploy Pershing II launchers in Western Europe in 1979.
The Soviet leadership, including General Secretary Yuri Andropov, feared Pershing II deployments were part of an elaborate US-led plan to decapitate the Soviet Union by taking out its political and military leadership.
“This situation is reminiscent of the events of the Cold War related to the deployment of American medium-range Pershing missiles in Europe,” Putin said.
The Pershing II, designed to deliver a variable yield nuclear warhead, was deployed to West Germany in 1983.
In 1983, the ailing Andropov and the KGB interpreted a series of US moves including the Pershing II deployment and a major Nato exercise as signs the West was about to launch a pre-emptive strike on the Soviet Union.
Putin repeated an earlier warning that Russia could resume production of intermediate and shorter range nuclear-capable missiles and then consider where to deploy them after the United States brought similar missiles to Europe and Asia.
US missiles continued to be stationed through the reunification of Germany and into the 1990s.
But following the end of the Cold War, the United States significantly reduced the numbers of missiles stationed in Europe as the threat from Moscow receded.
The Kremlin had already warned in mid July that the proposed US deployment would mean that European capitals would become a target for Russian missiles.
“We are taking steady steps towards the Cold War. All the attributes of the Cold War with the direct confrontation are returning,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a state TV reporter.