MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. Russia will react and take measures to maintain its national security, if the United States deploys intermediate and shorter-range missiles to the Asia-Pacific Region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a news briefing on Friday following Japanese mass media reports Tokyo and Washington were mulling plans for discussing the outlook for bringing to Japan US ground-based intermediate range missiles, previously banned under the INF treaty.
"The deployment of US intermediate and shorter-range missiles of whatever configuration in various parts of the world, including the Asia-Pacific region, would have an extremely destabilizing effect from the standpoint of international and regional security. This would trigger a new spiral of the arms race fraught with unpredictable consequences," she said. "Clearly, this march of events will by no means enhance the security of the United States, let alone its allies. The emergence of more missile threats will certainly entail our retaliation."
Zakharova recalled that Russia’s unilateral moratorium on deploying missiles of this class in the regions where this type of weapons of US manufacture was absent remained in force.
"We are calling upon all parties concerned for joint efforts to achieve a political and diplomatic settlement of the situation following Washington’s termination of the INF Treaty," she stressed.
Zakharova added that Russia kept the door open to equitable and constructive work for restoring trust, international security and strategic stability following the INF Treaty’s demise.