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NATO Gears Up to Respond to Russia’s Avoidance of ‘The Responsible Path’
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - NATO will announce new measures against Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty Wednesday, barring Russian compliance with longstanding U.S. demands for it to destroy a nuclear-capable missile system it says violates the treaty.
Hammered out by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, the INF disallowed the US and Russia from possessing land-based, medium-ranged missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles, which are said to make a short-notice nuclear strike possible, and of which the Russian 9M729 missile system is one kind, according to assessments by the US and the 29 NATO allies.
“We call on Russia to take the responsible path, but we have seen no indication that Russia intends to do so. We will need to respond,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Tuesday, telling reporters that NATO measures against Russia would be rolled out Wednesday.
Russia, for its part, held military exercises Monday in response, it said, to rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran in the Middle East, even pinning recent anti-Russia democratic unrest in Georgia on U.S. interference, with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu telling the TASS news agency that virtually the whole Russian military had been “placed on alert.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov echoed his sentiment on the same day, warning of an impasse comparable to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis should the U.S. decide to deploy nuclear-capable weaponry in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the INF on August 2nd.