MINSK, February 4. /TASS/. Minsk has received a notification from the US about its plans to suspend participation in the INF Treaty, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
"On February 2, we received an official notification from the American side about the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty in six months," the ministry said.
According to the deputy chief of the Foreign Ministry’s Department for Information and Digital Diplomacy, Andrey Shuplyak, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty had laid the foundation for the nuclear disarmament processes, and its signing was an invaluable contribution towards scaling down global tensions, restoring trust on the global arena, strengthening international security and strategic stability. "The withdrawal from the treaty may ruin the system of international agreements on international security, disarmament and arms control," the diplomat said.
Expressing concerns of Belarus, he said the situation developing around the INF Treaty may "escalate conflict potentials" and result "in a new spiral of the arms race, which will have grave long-term consequences for the European continent". The treaty "can and must be saved," he added.
"Belarus urges the US and Russia to once again demonstrate high responsibility for world’s fate, the way the USSR and the US did 30 years ago to prevent a destabilizing impact of this kind of weapons on security in the Eurasian region," the Foreign Ministry said.
Road to INF exit
On Friday, US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said that Washington would suspend its liabilities under the INF Treaty starting February 2 and would quit it within six months if Russia did not come into compliance with the agreement.
A day later, on Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded in kind, saying that Moscow would suspend the Cold War-era arms reduction treaty. Moreover, he told his ministers not to initiate disarmament talks with Washington, underscoring that the United States should become "mature enough" for equal and meaningful dialogue. Putin pointed out that Russia would start work on the development of new weapons mirroring Washington’s steps. In particular, work will begin on a new hypersonic ground-launched medium-range missile.
The US began censuring Russia for allegedly breaking the treaty in July 2014. Since then, Washington has repeated its accusations on many occasions. In turn, Moscow has rebuffed these allegations and advanced counterclaims against the US, saying that Washington has failed to comply with the accord.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed by the Soviet Union and the United States on December 8, 1987, entered into force on June 1, 1988. The INF deal covered deployed and non-deployed ground-based short-range missiles (from 500 to 1,000 kilometers) and intermediate-range missiles (from 1,000 to 5,500 kilometers). By June 1991, the parties had met their obligations under the treaty, as the Soviet Union had destroyed 1,846 missiles and the United States eliminated 846.