Russia will act to oppose the planned American deployment of long-range missiles in Germany because it considers such actions by the NATO military alliance to be a serious threat to Russian national security, the Kremlin announced yesterday.
The United States and Germany announced at a NATO summit in Washington on Wednesday that they will begin deploying long-range weapons to Germany in 2026 to demonstrate their commitment to NATO and European defense.
They said a "sporadic deployment" is in the works for longer-term deployments that will include SM-6s, Tomahawk cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons with a longer range than Europe's current capabilities.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has praised the plan to deploy long-range US missiles in his country, saying it fits perfectly with Germany's deterrence strategy.
"This decision has been prepared for a long time and does not come as a surprise to those involved in security and peace policy," said Solz. "After all, it fits perfectly into the security strategy of the German government," he added yesterday.
Germany is one of the few NATO countries where American nuclear weapons are stationed, but there is opposition from a section of the domestic public that dates back to the time when the then West Germany was on the front line during the Cold War.
Within Soltz's ruling coalition, the biggest opposition, according to Reuters, is expressed by the Green party, which said that they were not adequately briefed and that the decision is contrary to the budget agreement that was agreed upon after long and difficult negotiations.
NATO also announced on Wednesday that a new US air defense base in northern Poland, designed to detect and intercept ballistic missile attacks within the wider NATO missile shield, is ready.
When asked about the outcome of the NATO summit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "The North Atlantic Alliance has again clearly confirmed its essence. It is an alliance created in an era of conflict with the aim of maintaining conflict."
"Tensions on the European continent are escalating" as a result, he said, adding that the Kremlin is monitoring the approach of NATO military infrastructure. "We see the decisions made in NATO to create separate logistics centers in cities on the Black Sea, the opening of additional facilities in Europe, and we see that, in fact, NATO's military infrastructure is constantly and gradually moving towards our borders," Peskov said. .
"It obliges us to analyze the decisions made very deeply. It is a very serious threat to the national security of our country. All of this requires us to apply a thoughtful, coordinated, effective response in order to deter and oppose NATO".
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow anticipated the US-German missile move, which he said was designed to intimidate Russia and further destabilize regional security and strategic relations.
"The necessary work on the preparation of balancing countermeasures of the relevant Russian agencies has begun in advance and is being carried out on a systemic basis," stated Ryabkov's statement published on the ministry's website.
"Without nervousness, without emotion, we will develop a military response, first of all, to this new game," he told the Interfax agency.
Last month, Putin said Russia should resume production of medium- and short-range nuclear missiles and then consider where to deploy them, after the US deployed similar missiles in Europe and Asia.
He previously said that it was agreed that such missiles would not be deployed in the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, but he said that the US had resumed their production, deployed them in Denmark for exercises and also in the Philippines.
Reuters reminds that the deployment of missiles with a range of more than 500 km was prohibited until 2019 according to the Treaty on Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF), which was signed in 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev in front of the Soviet Union and then US President Ronald Reagan.
However, the United States withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2019, citing Moscow's violation of the agreement, which the Kremlin has denied.
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