MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. Russia’s plans for creating a new generation of railroad-based ballistic missiles by no means run counter to the provisions of the strategic arms reduction treaty START-3 and will certainly not require its revision, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said on Wednesday.
“The existence of our plans for creating rail-based ICBMs by no means contradicts Russia’s liabilities under the START treaty. The emergence of rail-based ICBMs will not require its revision,” Antonov said.
He recalled that START did not contain a ban on mobile missiles as such and either party was free to determine the composition and structure of its strategic forces on its own. “The key provision of that treaty is to comply with the qualitative restrictions: the number of delivery vehicles and operational warheads,” Antonov explained.
He recalled the existence of the bilateral consultative commission, empowered to consider all START-3 related issues.
Earlier, US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Rose Gottemoeller said that the re-emergence of Russia’s railway-based missiles might have a negative effect on strategic stability and the complexes must be liable to the operation of START-3.
Russia withdrew railway-based inter-continental ballistic missiles from operation in 2005. At the moment research and development work is in progress on their successor, Barguzin, which, according to Strategic Missile Force expectations, will surpass by far the parameters of its predecessor and remain in active service at least till 2040.
A former Strategic Missile Force commander, Viktor Yesin, has told TASS that Barguzin is Russia’s response to the United States’ deployment of the anti-ballistic missile defense. The mobile missiles’ high mobility and stealthiness make a missile defense easily pregnable, he said.