MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st October, 2018) Russia will have no other choice but to take retaliatory measures, including military ones, if the United States continues to unilaterally withdraw from agreements and treaties, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Sputnik on Sunday, commenting on the United States' withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia.
US President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that Washington pulled out of the INF treaty, accusing Moscow of violating it.
"The issue is too serious to be dealt with through public debate. If the United States continues to act so clumsily and harshly, as we can see it do on numerous occasions, if it continues to unilaterally withdraw from agreements, different kinds of accords and mechanisms, and the examples are piling up � from the JCPOA on Iran to the Universal Postal Union � then we will have nothing left to do but to take retaliatory measures, including ones of military and technological nature. But we would like to avoid that. The US clumsy and harsh politics sees more and more rejection in a lot of countries and wide circles of international community. Washington should not underestimate these shifts in sentiment," Ryabkov said.
Moscow and Washington signed the INF Treaty back in 1987, agreeing for the first time to cut their arsenals of nuclear weapons and destroy all cruise or ground-launched ballistic missiles that have ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310 and 3,400 miles).
