A nuclear treaty involves many complicated issues. And we will get to those in the narrative lower in this article. We thought it would be helpful to break down the claims and counterclaims involving the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty before directly addressing the details that lead to the Polygraph.info verdict:
The U.S. has said since 2014 that Russia is in violation of the INF Treaty, though very few of the details have been made publicly available. In 2017, the State Department did reveal the missile in question -- the 9M729. In 2018, the U.S. ambassador to Russia said the U.S. had provided “geographic coordinates” and the dates of tests showing the violations.
The Russian government consistently denies violations.
The director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, an independent academic research project, insists the U.S. could have only “indirect” evidence -- that the rocket had not been tested to distances that would verify a violation. The indirect evidence could include “detailed blueprints of the missile and all its technical characteristics.”
The Dutch government says it has verified, based on its own independent intelligence, that Russia is developing a cruise missile in violation of the treaty.
The government says the U.S. the Aegis Ashore missile defense system and a vertical launcher deployed in Romania could be used for offensive missiles.
The Aegis was developed as a purely defensive system to protect U.S. Navy ships. The U.S. claims the newer, land-based Aegis also is defensive.
The Arms Control Association’s executive director says the Aegis system can be equipped with offensive weapons, though he adds these "are not equivalent problems."
We find President Putin’s words to be misleading. The 9M729 missile that is already deployed in European Russia is a threat to a number of European countries, whatever claims to its are accurate -- the Russian or the U.S.
During a February 2 televised working meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, that day’s decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on February 2 was the chief topic.
Lavrov said Moscow had done “everything” to save the INF Treaty, given its “importance in terms of sustaining strategic stability in Europe, as well as globally.” Shoigu said the country would develop new types of weapons, including a ground-based long-range hypersonic missile system.
Despite placing all of the blame on the U.S., Putin said Moscow would not place short- or medium-ranged weapons “in Europe or in other regions of the world” if analogous U.S. weapons were not deployed in corresponding regions.
"For many years, we have repeatedly raised the issue of substantive negotiations on disarmament issues, in almost all its aspects. And in recent years, we see that our partners do not support our initiatives. On the contrary, all the time pretexts are sought out for dismantling the already established system of international security,” Putin said.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told Polygraph.info that President Putin’s proposal is “the start of a conversation,” but ultimately Moscow would be required to remove “those missiles that it has already deployed to locations further in the east so they cannot hit targets in Europe.”
He added: “That would calm the waters in the absence of the INF Treaty. It’s not an ideal solution but it’s one way to avoid each side from rushing to develop and deploy prohibited missiles.”
Kimball’s assertion that Russia will “ultimately” need to move the missiles reflects the State Department’s 2014 that Russia was in violation, despite a later the U.S. “did not offer any details.”
The U.S. Department of State Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Bureau, in an unclassified , “determined” that Russia “continued to be in violation of its obligations under the INF Treaty not to possess, produce, or flight-test a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) with a range capability of 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers, or to possess or produce launchers of such missiles.”
It identified the Russian missile as the SSC-8 (Novator 9M729), and added details that covert development began in the mid-2000s, testing soon afterward. An indicated the Novator had not been tested beyond INF limits even as late as 2015.
The State Department report :