John Bolton said Russia had been violating treaty for years and rising powers such as China meant there is a ‘new strategic reality’
The US national security adviser, John Bolton, has confirmed that the US will withdrawal from the landmark intermediate- range nuclear forces treaty (INF) after meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin and senior Russian officials.
Speaking in Moscow, Bolton said that Russia had been violating the treaty for years and that rising powers such as China meant that it was a “new strategic reality out there”.
Bolton also said that China’s cyber-attacks against the United States made Russia seem like the “junior partner”. He did not go into detail.
The INF was a “bilateral treaty in a multipolar ballistic missile world”, Bolton said, adding that no formal steps had yet been taken but that the US would exit the treaty “in due course”.
The treaty, concluded in 1987, barred the United States and Russia from deploying missiles with a range from 500 to 5,500 km, and largely was credited with banishing nuclear missiles from Europe.
Bolton avoided directly answering questions from press about whether “we’ll soon be seeing US missiles in Europe”, saying only that the single country constrained by the INF treaty was the United States.
“It is the American position that Russia is in violation,” Bolton said at Interfax, the same press agency where he discussed US plans to withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2001.
