The Time Has Not Come

"I hope that everything that was said today would make any potential aggressor think twice, since unfriendly steps against Russia such as deploying missile defences and bringing NATO infrastructure closer to the Russian border become ineffective in military terms and entail unjustified costs, making them useless for those promoting these initiatives.

It was our duty to inform our partners of what I said here today under the international commitments Russia had subscribed to.

When the time comes, foreign and defence ministry experts will have many opportunities to discuss all these matters with them, if of course our partners so desire."
Vladimir Putin, March 01, 2018



"Today I submitted my own views, private views, to - called [Zda] weekly...-  specifically devoted to the issue raised by President Joseph Biden on the 1st of August. And I said that the time has not come to tackle, to debate this issue in the present day situation.

But the present day situation is not in favor of starting such kind of talks devoted to new START treaty number 4. Military encounter in Ukraine, deployment of anti ballistic missile at operational bases in Romania...and soon will be operational in Poland, and we consider that this kind of facilities can be used for housing not only defensive or interceptor missiles, weapons, but also offensive, like land-based cruise missiles, nuclear tip, and in the future also hypersonic missile.

We ...in the Russian Federation...still living, while watching day in day out, ..the NATO airforce operation called 'Baltic air policing' in the airspace of 3 Baltic nations - Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, plus Poland ...This operation has dual capable aircraft, of all 3 nuclear western nuclear powers and we do not know what kind of air drop bomb this interceptor bombers of the United Kingdom, France and the United States...we do not know what kind of weapons they are carrying, because we can't send our inspectors because we have never conducted any negotiations whatsoever on this specific issue."
Dr. Vladimir Kozin, Professor of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences Oct 6, 2022

"In January 2022 the leaders of 5 nuclear weapons States made a joint affirmation that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." They committed to progress nuclear disarmament, and, rather curiously, the ambiguous phrase "and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” "

“…some time ago the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Missile Defence Treaty and started what amounts to undermining the fundamentals of international security. Yet another step has been made now. the US anti-missile deployment area is being created and was commissioned in Romania.

What is this? These are launch pads and radar stations.

Today, 500-kilometre range Iskander land-based missiles are being deployed; in a few years they will be 1000-kilometre range missiles. We even know the approximate date when such missiles will be deployed.

How can this not be a threat to us? It is a clear threat to our nuclear forces.

However, there is something else that is even worse: these compact launch pads can accommodate assault missiles with a 2,400-kilometre range, and replacing the missiles is no problem, one only has to change the software, and nobody is going to notice anything, even the Romanians. Isn’t it a threat to us? It certainly is.

That is the reason we have to respond now, and if yesterday some areas in Romania did not know what it is like to be a target, today we will have to take action to ensure our security. Let me repeat, these are response measures, a response only. We were not the first to take such steps.
Vladimir Putin 27 May 2016

"Today, 500-kilometre range Iskander land-based missiles are being deployed; in a few years they will be 1,000-kilometre range missiles. We even know the approximate date when such missiles will be deployed. ...You saw, the whole world saw our capabilities in terms of medium-range sea and air based missiles. We are not violating anything, but the Iskander land-based missile systems have a brilliant record"
Vladimir Putin 27 May 2016

At the time the Russian President made this comment, the INF Treaty was still in place. It prohibited ground-launched missiles with a range of over 500 kilometers. The range of the Iskander-M could be increased to 1,000 kilometers, but it could not be deployed in ground based systems. But it in principle could be built and not deployed. Clearly, the Russian President anticipated that when Russia announced the new unbeatable hypersonic weapons the US would 'officially' abandon the INF Treaty. He - rightly - assessed the US would compensate for the inferior speed of US tomahawk missiles by placing them hard up against the Russian border, initially close to the historic command and control centres in West Russia. For preference, right in the Crimean Peninsular. And build a US naval base right in there, allowing US permanent access to the Black Sea, and the threatening the Black Sea coastline with US submarines and surface ships carrying tomahawk cruise missiles tipped with tactical nuclear weapons. 

The Russian military announced in 2016 that they were going to modernise the Iskander missile system, without giving details. The Iskander system alone has great potential to end military infrastructure of all kinds, as well as troop concentrations. It is mobile, relatively cheap, and very flexible. The Iskander complex can fire 2 missiles that travel at around mach 6-7 (hypersonic speed), either cruise (Iskander-K) or ballistic missiles (Iskander-M). They can be fitted with several type of warheads, from conventional munitions, bunker buster, cluster warheads to 'low' yield (5 to 50 kilotonnes) tactical nuclear warheads.

Once the US abandoned the INF treaty Russia would have a free hand to modernise not just the Iskander, but a whole suite of medium range missiles in order to reach every part of Europe - and the west coast of the USA. The USA, for its part, of course had long intended to ring Russia and China with just such land-based missiles, placed in Ukraine, Norway, Poland, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, the Central Asian 'stans', Mongolia, South Korea, Japan, Philippines, and China's Taiwan province. In order to 'contain' these two great countries.

The Russian President was simply warning Russia's expansion of medium range missiles would inevitably happen as a result of US actions, and by implication, that it would be better for the USA to eventually agree on a multi-country strategic weapons treaty. Part of the reason, of course, is that Russia's intermediate range missiles could conceivably be placed in Venezuela and other South or Central American countries. In the meantime, shorter range hypersonic missiles (with conventional warheads) are on Russian ships and submarines visiting Cuba, Venezuela and the Caribbean. The missiles they carry will now become much longer range, reaching deep into mainland USA.

Russia is rightly concerned about the anti-ballistic missile shield placed in Poland and Romania, which, if effective, destroys strategic balance. The initial anti-ballistic missile shield covering non-existant nuclear missiles from Iran, a 'threat' which was the alleged basis for the anti-ballistic missile shield has morphed into a shield to allegedly protect Europe from Russian missiles. In fact, it is designed to protect mainland USA from Russian strategic ballistic missiles at the early stage of their launch, when they are traveling at their slowest. Russia had suggested cooperative anti-ballistic missile shields, which would have more or less ended the risk of nuclear weapons fired from relatively close off-shore and from static land-based strategic nuclear missiles.

The Russian President made this explicitly clear in 2019 when US tore up the INF Treaty.

"...the unilateral US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that, as we have always believed, and as I am still convinced, was the cornerstone of the entire international security system.

We debated this matter for a long time, argued and suggested various solutions. In any event, I made very energetic attempts to convince our US partners not to withdraw from the Treaty.

And, if the US side still wanted to withdraw from the Treaty, it should have done so in such a way as to guarantee international security for a long historical period.

I suggested this, I have already discussed this in public, and I repeat that I did this because I consider this matter to be very important.

I suggested working jointly on missile-defence projects that should have involved the United States, Russia and Europe. They stipulated specific parameters of this cooperation, determined dangerous missile approaches and envisioned technology exchanges, the elaboration of decision-making mechanisms, etc. Those were absolutely specific proposals.

I am convinced that the world would be a different place today, had our US partners accepted this proposal.

Unfortunately, this did not happen.

We can see that the situation is developing in another direction; new weapons and cutting-edge military technology are coming to the fore. Well, this is not our choice."
Vladimir Putin 27 June 2019

... We have introduced a new postulate on it being possible to use the Armed Forces not only to rebuff but also prevent an armed attack on Russia or its allies, if this armed attack is absolutely inevitable.

Thereby we unequivocally let potential aggressors know that Russia will resolutely defend its right and the right of our allies to free and safe development."
Sergey Lavrov 19 June 2023 

In other words, in case of an armed attack on Russia being inevitable, even before open conflict erupts, Russia's cutting edge, unstoppable, manoeuvering hypersonic conventional missiles, fired from sea or land, will destroy the anti-ballistic missile systems in Romania, Poland, and wherever they are installed. Most likely all nuclear capable NATO bombers and nuclear capable fighters within strike range of Russia will be destroyed at the same time. Destroyed early and without warning. Checkmate. Defeated. All that money wasted. And it didn't have to be this way.

"They [USA] are using various far-fetched pretexts to deploy ground-based anti-missile systems in close proximity to Russian borders.

Projects are rapidly unfolding to develop marine vessels, which regularly appear near the Russian coast.

The United States is also implementing plans to develop the space segment of its global missile defence system, which actually envisages the deployment of anti-missile strike weapons in space in the future.

In addition, in the context of their missile defence efforts, Washington included, at the doctrinal level, the possibility of carrying out “disarming” strikes against the missile capabilities of those countries that the United States considers to be its adversaries.

It should be understood that attempts to present the global missile defence system as a purely defensive project are nothing more than a smoke screen. By building up its anti-missile capabilities, the United States mainly seeks to gain a decisive advantage by creating conditions for dealing the first strike to the enemy and protecting itself from retaliatory actions. This can and is already leading to serious consequences in the security sphere. It is upsetting the strategic balance of power in the world and spurring an arms race, including missiles..

For our part, we intend to act in accordance with the task set by the President of Russia to ensure a conflict-free coexistence by maintaining the balance of power and strategic stability.

In our dialogue with Washington on this track, we promote the concept of a comprehensive review of factors affecting strategic stability, embracing all weapons capable of solving strategic problems – nuclear and conventional, offensive and defensive. At the same time, when we discuss strategic defensive systems, we primarily mean due consideration of the missile defence factor.."
Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova 3 May 2021

"...the last time a credible military threat was placed near the border of the United States, the US responded so aggressively that it almost ended the world....the fact that people who think Russia and China should tolerate US actions on their borders that the US would never tolerate on its own borders actually believe the United States should rule the world. ...the only reason we survived that perilous standoff was because Washington made compromises and pulled its Jupiter missiles out of Turkey and Italy.

...the Cuban Missile Crisis shows how aggressively the US will respond to a foreign rival placing a military threat near its border....

...the single dumbest thing the US empire asks us to believe is that its amassing of war machinery near the borders of its top two geopolitical rivals should be seen as a defensive measure, rather than the act of extreme aggression that it obviously is..."
Caitlin Johnstone 27 August 2023

"The US Compliance Report again reads that the United States fully complies with its commitments under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). As before, we have no grounds to agree with this. Washington unilaterally withdrew a hundred strategic offensive arms from counting under the Treaty, and this problem remains outstanding. Let's recall the gist of this problem.

By February 5, 2018, Russia and the United States were supposed to reduce the aggregate numbers of these arms to the levels set out in Article II of the Treaty and not to increase them subsequently.

Russia fully complied with its commitment, which the US recognised. We cannot confirm that the US did this as well.

According to the United States, its aggregate level of deployed and non-deployed heavy bombers and strategic missile launchers amounts to 800, but in reality this number is much bigger. Washington did not count 56 submarine ballistic missile launchers and 41 B-52H heavy bombers. It claims that they were converted into a conventional-only role.

Russia is not able to verify the US “conversion”, as is envisaged by Item 3, Section I of Part Three of the New START Treaty’s Protocol.

In addition, the US does not count four silo launchers designed for training and tries to justify this by putting them into the category of silo training launchers that are not covered by the Treaty.

This US-created problem obviously undermines the Treaty and directly affects the prospects for extending it. A search for ways to resolve this problem has been futile so far.

We will continue trying to prevent the US from gaining unilateral advantages and to compel it to fully comply with all of the Treaty’s commitments.

After Washington destroyed the INF Treaty, New START is the last international treaty to limit the Russian and US nuclear missile potentials and to make activities in this area predictable and mutually verifiable."
Russia Ministry of Foreign Affairs Statement 20 September 2019 



"We, including the President, have repeatedly stated that Russia’s security is reliably ensured for decades to come.

The United States and its NATO allies are aware of that.

But the effectiveness of ensuring national security will only benefit from efficient and working mechanisms in the sphere of arms control.

The amounts spent on this work can be streamlined, if we choose to use this language.

In political and diplomatic terms, predictability and understanding of what we can expect from our opponents in terms of their capabilities will sharply decrease in the absence of the treaty.

Of course, what the US analysts point out as positive aspects of the New START Treaty – transparency and predictability – is important for us as well. Truth be told, a treaty built on parity and a balance of interests will do the same for us.

Even without the treaty, we will work to strengthen security and address issues, including political and diplomatic issues, through other means. As I mentioned earlier, it will be harder to do without it."
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov 6 March 2020 

"...we cannot understand what they mean when they say that the treaty [the START Treaty] does not cover the latest Russian weapons, and that the renewal depends on the solution of this ‘problem.’ The treaty cannot be rewritten. If anybody wanted to do this, it would be a completely different document...

...Bringing up China is a huge political challenge and a very complicated, large issue. Even in terms of the working procedures and diplomacy it is an infeasible task.

We agree with China that before trying to reach some dubious and hard-to-reach goals, it is better to begin with the preservation of what is already there. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Had we received a note in response saying that “the United States is ready to renew the treaty if
a) the People’s Republic of China becomes a party, and
b) specific provisions are added to the text, we would have answered that extending the treaty under these terms would be impossible in view of the reasons that I have already mentioned.

We cannot fulfil these conditions just for the sake of pleasing the Americans."
Let me say a few more words on this subject. Regarding Russia’s new arms systems, we have told the Americans on multiple occasions that two of them, i.e., Avangard and Sarmat, can be included in the treaty. We have already shown one of them to the Americans.

As for the other three, we are open to discussing this matter, but only as part of a conversation on the whole range of questions relating to ensuring strategic stability.

In this sphere, we have to primarily focus on US programmes and projects that are a matter of concern for us.

This includes the US global anti-missile defence, the prospects of US deploying offensive weapons in space, the prompt global strike programme, and many other questions.

The imbalance in conventional weapons is also a factor for us.

It would be impossible to come to a common denominator on matters of strategic stability without taking these questions into consideration.

The Americans refuse to listen to us when we try explaining why this matters.

They adopted an arrogant and mentoring tone, claiming that from now on the United States will discuss arms control only when decisions help strengthen its own security, as if they have ever acted differently, or we thought of anything other than ensuring our national security in the process.

 Let me reiterate that we do not really understand whether the Americans are interested in keeping arms control in place as a means of ensuring security.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov 17 April 2020  

"As a reminder, the treaty was signed in 1990 between the members of the Warsaw Treaty and the NATO countries, to establish a balance of forces between the members of these military and political unions at lowered levels, and to restrict the deployment of their conventional weapons along the contact line.

However, subsequent events – dissolution of the Warsaw Treaty and the Soviet Union, new conflicts on our territory and the consequential expansion of NATO to the east – prompted the adaptation of the CFE to the new circumstances.

At Russia’s insistence, the Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed on November 19, 1999, in Istanbul, to never commence due to the destructive position of the Western countries that declined its ratification and continued bypassing the restrictions under the initial CFE by expanding the alliance.

In these conditions, Russia suspended the implementation of its CFE obligations in 2007 but left the door open for reviving conventional arms control in Europe.

The Western countries have had more than enough time to show common sense – and yet, they chose confrontation with Russia, which was reflected in NATO’s new strategic concept, among other things, not to mention the entirety of their hostile actions against our country, including the pumping of weapons and military equipment to the Kiev regime.

As emphasised in Russia’s notices, a safe and stable balance of conventional arms in the north of Europe has been seriously undermined by the recent accession to NATO of Finland, a non-CFE country that borders Russian territory which is regulated by the CFE, and the prospects of deploying conventional arms of third countries in Finland, along with the ongoing accession of Sweden, also not a CFE member. These steps were the last straw that prompted the Russian Federation to finally exit the treaty."
Foreign Ministry statement 9 June 2023

“We put forth numerous practical de-escalation and confidence-building proposals for the continent. The Alliance has disregarded all of them...

[…] We strongly recommend that the United States and NATO countries harbour no illusions that their aggressive behaviour towards nations will remain unpunished.

They should start thinking about the possibility of resuming discussions on a new architecture of European security after what they have done and intend to do. […]

We urge our colleagues to sober up and to ask themselves how they can implement the political obligations on the indivisibility of security in Europe, which they adopted at the top level during the OSCE summits in 1999 and 2010."
Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman 28 April 2022

"The situation in the field of arms control continues to get worse, due to the destabilising policies and destructive actions of the United States. At the same time, the Americans are deliberately adding to the tension in the field of international security. These inseparably interlinked processes enrich one another.

As for the methods they use, the Americans opt either to dismantle contractual frameworks by withdrawing from them, as was the case with the ABM, INF and Open Skies treaties, or create conditions which make it impossible for the other side to fulfil their obligations. This is what happened with the CFE Treaty and the New START.

Washington follows a simple logic. The very foundations of US dominance are crumbling, which is largely attributable to the blunders of the Americans themselves, so confident were they in their exceptional nature, their infallibility and impunity.

They placed their bets on force in an attempt to slow down the erosion of their hegemony. This is why they have been seeking to secure their military supremacy and have a free hand to use force. And this is how we can explain their refusal to accept any restrictions in terms of arms control or other instruments for ensuring a strategic balance of interests among international actors.

Let me share just one example with you: the United States used a far-fetched pretext for dismantling the INF Treaty. In reality, the United States felt that it needed the missiles banned by the treaty, including against China. The restrictions became a nuisance to them, so they got rid of them without any hesitation. This step clearly had a negative bearing on regional and global security.

With the United States moving forward with its plans to deploy ground-based intermediate and shorter-range missiles in Europe and Asia-Pacific, Russia faces the increasingly urgent question of whether sticking with the moratorium on deploying similar weapons makes any sense, considering that this moratorium hinges upon the non-deployment of these US-made weapons in these regions.

As for the prospects for dialogue with the United States on the New START or reaching an agreement to replace it with another treaty, we sent a clear signal that there will be no dialogue as long as Washington continues with its anti-Russia policies.

It is obvious to us that the American proposals on launching nuclear arms control talks while keeping them separate from the negative military and political context and the dismal state of relations between Russia and the West are inadequate. We can see through what Washington is after: they want to mitigate nuclear risks to themselves while securing an advantage in terms of other military capabilities.

This approach, which the Americans refer to as compartmentalisation – a rather obscure and opaque notion, is absolutely unacceptable. It basically means that Russia is an enemy, but we want to get something from it. The fact that the United States and its allies persist with their efforts to promote escalation in and around Ukraine without hiding their intention of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, makes this even more unacceptable.

We do not reject the concept of arms control. That said, any eventual dialogue on ways of minimising the potential for conflict or agreement on the way we will coexist with the West in the future, would require equality and respect for Russia’s core security interests, as well as acknowledgment of the whole new geopolitical reality. There is no point in discussing this topic any further unless the United States and its allies are ready to accept this."
Sergey Lavrov 28 December 2023

“We don’t have any relationship with the US at the moment. They are at zero degrees Kelvin. And we should not unfreeze them for now...Let them come or crawl and beg for it.
And they should value it as an act of utmost generosity.
Otherwise, this is how it looks: they toss only sleaze our way, and we go, 'there, have this nuclear deal, please'.”
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian National Security Council, Telegram June 2022

"First, we see no need to use it [tactical nuclear weapons]; and second, considering this, even as a possibility, factors into lowering the threshold for the use of such weapons. This is my first point.

The second point is that we have more such nuclear weapons than NATO countries. They know about it and never stop trying to persuade us to start nuclear reduction talks. Like hell we will, right? A popular phrase. (Laughter.) Because, putting it in the dry language of economic essays, it is our competitive advantage.

As you know, we have been in talks...about deploying some of these tactical nuclear weapons to Belarusian territory. This has happened. The first nuclear warheads have been delivered to Belarus, but only the first batch. There will be more. By...the end of this year, we will complete this work.

This is an element of deterrence, so that everyone who thinks of inflicting a strategic defeat on us should keep this circumstance in mind."
Vladimir Putin 16 June 2023

"the issue of creating a legal framework for international security and strategic stability is still on our to-do list.

Should these be new agreements or should we return to the old ones?

This is up to the experts to decide. You know, even when I was studying at the university, I did not study public international law, I studied private international law and my thesis was about it. Then, I did economics.

But it is not even about ... the formal, or the legal aspect, but about the root of the matters that we should address as a team.

We have articulated our proposals. I mentioned [them] when I spoke before the Foreign Ministry’s senior officials. As a matter of fact, it was put on paper. But there must be goodwill on the part of those who are interested in seeing this happen.

We sometimes hear from the United States that they are willing to resume talks on this subject. But they appear to be undecided. At some point they seem to want it, next thing you know they do not. During the latter stint of President Obama’s administration, they let us know that they wanted to, but then all of a sudden they changed their mind.
Vladimir Putin 4 July 2024