Moscow Announces New Missiles After U.S. 'Suspends' INF Treaty

As soon as Washington announced its “suspension” of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty beginning on February 2, 2019, Moscow responded by declaring its own “suspension” of the INF (see EDM, January 17, February 4). Legally speaking, neither side is allowed to “suspend” anything; the INF is still officially legally binding for at least six more months as both the U.S. State Department and Moscow have confirmed (Militarynews.ru, February 4). What has in fact happened, as Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov has spelled out, is that both the U.S. and Russia have, practically speaking, simultaneously exchanged notes triggering the six-month waiting period before the INF becomes officially defunct.   Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov implied Moscow will be awaiting concrete proposals from Washington on a follow-up multinational treaty on intermediate-range missiles involving not only Russia and the U.S., but China and other countries that President Donald Trump might propose. According to Lavrov, Moscow will not, for the time being, attempt to engage Washington on a possible prolongation of the last remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons treaty: the New START strategic arms limitation treaty, which will expire on February 5, 2021. New START, signed by presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev in April 2010, has an inbuilt provision of a one-time five-year extension that does not require a ratification vote in the U.S. Senate or the Russian Duma. Moscow has many times asked Washington to begin talks on this treaty’s prolongation, but, according to Lavrov, Russia has received no response and will not be asking again (Interfax, February 6).

Air- and naval-based Kalibr cruise missiles may have already been prepared for land deployment, though the actual production of such missiles will not be “cheap” (see EDM, January 17). Together with the announced “ballistic hypersonic intermediate-range missile,” Shoigu declared Russia’s readiness to field, by 2020, new land-based intermediate-range cruise missiles after the INF is invalid (Militarynews.ru, February 5). This new ballistic hypersonic missile has caused much commotion in Moscow’s expert community: No one fully understands what sort of missile it may be. One proposal is that it could be a reworked Cold War–era SS-20, like those once destroyed under the INF, or maybe a modified and land-deployed “Khinzal” hypersonic aerial missile that is presently deployed in small numbers and fired from MiG-31 interceptor planes. But the Khinzal is, in fact, a modified Iskander 9M723 ballistic nuclear-capable tactical missile that officially has a range of under 500 kilometers (Lenta.ru, February 5). Speaking at a televised meeting in the defense ministry, Shoigu additionally announced the “importance of increasing the range of land-based missiles being developed” (Militarynews.ru, February 5). His remarks, therefore, might suggest that the range of Iskander ballistic missiles, of which many hundreds have already been deployed, could be significantly extended. Or possibly, the 9M729 long-range cruise missile, which Washington says is the primary Russian violation of the INF, is only the tip of the iceberg, and there are other more potent weapons in Putin’s arsenal.

Since 2007, Russian officials, including Putin himself, have repeatedly denounced the INF Treaty as unfair and “one-sided” (see EDM, October 25, 2018). And over the following 12 years, Moscow seems to have been preparing for the exact moment Washington decides to ditch the INF. That moment has now come to pass; and in response, Russia is swiftly moving to display and deploy an array of intermediate-range weapons, in effect trying to win the new arms race before it has officially begun.

The notion of a seemingly “cheap and smart” Russian response to U.S. arms programs is a PR argument directly reminiscent of the Cold War. During the past several years, Moscow has regularly implied it could easily outsmart the “wasteful” Americans who allegedly throw billions of dollars at useless projects with little effect. And most recently, this Cold War–style argument is being complemented by Putin’s mantra about never being pulled into an arms race. In reality, there is no such thing as a cheap nuclear-tipped missile. The present Russian government has been using dubious creative accounting to improve statistical results and declare that the country’s GDP grew by 2.3 percent in 2018 (Kommersant, February 5). But meanwhile, Russian household incomes have continued to fall for a fifth year in a row and are expected to decline further in 2019. Moreover, inflation soared to 5 percent in January, while the drop in consumer confidence has been unrelenting (Kommersant, February 7). The Russian people are paying the price for the accelerating arms race and standoff with the West. But at present, this is not threatening the stability of Putin’s regime, which apparently continues to believe in the saving grace of Cold War–style mobilization of anti-American fervor and defense patriotism.

Dr. Pavel E. Felgenhauer is a Moscow-based defense analyst and columnist for Novaya Gazeta as well as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He served as senior research officer in the Soviet Academy of Sciences, from where he received his Ph.D. Dr. Felgenhauer has published widely on Russian foreign and defense policies, military doctrine, arms trade and the military-industrial complex.

This article appeared originally at The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor.