MOSCOW, October 29. /TASS/. The Russia-NATO Council will discuss the United States’ plans to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) at its upcoming meeting, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for European Cooperation Andrei Kelin told reporters on Monday.

"We continue preparations for a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council, expected to be held in the near future," he said. "I think the meeting’s agenda will be incomplete without the US plans to pull out from the INF Treaty, which is the hottest topic at the moment," Kelin added.

A NATO official told TASS earlier that the Council would hold an ambassadorial meeting in Brussels on October 31.

INF Treaty situation

On October 20, US President Donald Trump said that Washington would pull out of the INF Treaty because Russia had allegedly violated it.

The INF Treaty was concluded on December 8, 1987, and took effect on June 1, 1988. It applies to deployed and non-deployed ground-based missiles of intermediate range (1,000-5,000 kilometers) and shorter range (500-1,000 kilometers). In the recent years, Washington has been repeatedly accusing Russia of violating the treaty. Moscow strongly dismissed the accusations and voiced its own claims concerning Washington’s non-compliance.