Amid the public whipsaw of New START nuclear-arms negotiations between Washington and Moscow, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, offered to limit deployment of land-based intermediate range missiles near the European border.
Putin on Monday morning offered refrain from deploying the 9M729 missile near Europe if the U.S. would agree to reciprocal steps, including allowing inspections of deployed and planned Aegis Ashore missile defense systems in Romania and Poland. The Kremlin released an English-language version of the proposal on Monday.
The U.S. dropped out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year over the 9M729 missile, which both the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administration said violated the Cold War-era treaty against medium-range, land-based missiles in Europe. Russia complains that the Aegis Ashore missile defense system could easily be turned into an offensive weapon.
The U.S. has rushed ahead with plans for ground-based INF-range missile systems since the treaty withdrawal, but neither Washington nor Moscow has publicly discussed new nuclear-armed INF-range systems, yet.
As Russian nuke analyst Pavel Podvig pointed out on Twitter, Russia now puts its 9M729 missile, which it says complied with the now-defunct INF treaty, on equal footing in negotiations with a U.S.-built system that Moscow has said could violate the old treaty.
In its new offer, Russia insists that 9M729 is treaty-compliant, but now it is ready to treat it as an INF missile for the purposes of the moratorium. It’s ready to verifiably demonstrate the absence of these missiles in Kaliningrad and “to continue not to deploy it” in Europe 4/ pic.twitter.com/OaPRc32a8M
— Pavel Podvig (@russianforces) October 26, 2020
Putin’s offer, arriving the week before U.S. elections, sparked days of back-and-forth online between American and international defense watchers. A couple U.S.-based watchers in the open-source world panned Russia’s offer.
So, basically it’s a promise to show us there are no 9M729s in Kaliningrad (which has never been part of the U.S. complaint) in exchange for giving Russia leverage over the deployment of of U.S. missile defenses in Europe (which has always been the Russian complaint) (3/2, fin.)
— Amy⚾️🦈 (@Woolaf) October 27, 2020
NATO will likely say that since it knows there are no 9M729s in Kaliningrad, it would mean Russian access to two missile defense facilities in return for nothing. 2/n
— Hans Kristensen (@nukestrat) October 26, 2020
Russia made its offer about a treaty that no longer exists while Moscow and Washington are considering whether to extend the last nuclear-arms-limiting treaty between the two old Cold War foes that does.
With the general election barreling down on the U.S., the two sides are weighing a possible one-year extension of the New START treaty. The signatories of the Barack Obama-era treaty are bargaining over whether to extend the long-range-nuke-limiting accord for one year in exchange for a freeze on deploying other types of nuclear weapons. It will expire Feb. 5, if they do not.
The U.S. wants new verification measures to enforce the proposed freeze, and Russia has said such conditions are better discussed after formalizing a treaty extension, media reported last week.
New START limits the U.S. and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads on a total of no more than 700 fielded intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines, and heavy bombers.
