MOSCOW, July 11. /TASS/. The potential deployment of US intermediate-and shorter-range missiles to Germany may lead to World War III, Andrey Gromyko, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Europe, said.

"Today is the final day of the NATO summit in Washington. Yesterday, news came that the US and Germany had entered into an agreement to resume the deployment of intermediate-and shorter-range land-based missiles to Germany starting in 2026," he pointed out at a TASS roundtable dedicated to the first international Leo Tolstoy Award ceremony. "If this happens, everyone here in Europe will take a step back to the first half of the 1980s and the situation in Europe will probably put the world on the brink of World War III," the expert added.

Gromyko also noted that researchers, politicians and diplomats had a lot of work to do "to resolve the enduring issue of war and peace."

Washington and Berlin said earlier in a joint statement that the US would begin deployments of long-range fires capabilities in Germany in 2026, "which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe."