NEW YORK, October 2. /TASS/. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia has paid little attention to remarks of other states' permanent representatives at various international organizations, CNN reported on Tuesday.
The statement came in response to remarks by US Permanent Representative to NATO, Amb. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who said her country was ready to "take out" Russian missiles, perceived to be in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).
Commenting on the statement, the Kremlin spokesman said Moscow "prefers not to pay extra attention to statements by ambassadors while we have too many uncertainties with the messages on the higher level," CNN said.
At a news conference in the run-up to the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels on October 3-4, Hutchison accused Russia of violating the INF treaty, adding that "the countermeasures would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty," according to a US NATO mission transcript.
The US diplomat later explained that she did not mean a preemptive strike.
"I was not talking about preemptively striking Russia. My point: [Russia] needs to return to INF Treaty compliance or we will need to match its capabilities to protect US & NATO interests. The current situation, with [Russia] in blatant violation, is untenable," Hutchinson wrote on Twitter.
The INF Treaty was signed in Washington on December 8, 1987, and took effect on June 1, 1988. The INF Treaty eliminated operational and non-operational medium range (1,000-5,500 kilometers) and shorter range (500-1,000 kilometers) ground-launched missiles. By June 1991, the Soviet Union had eliminated 1,846 missiles, while the United States rolled back its arsenal to 846. That said, inspections ended in May 2001.
In 2014, the United States accused Russia of developing a missile with an operational range of 500 to 5,500 km. In 2017, US media outlets reported that the missile was codenamed 9M729 (NATO reporting name: SSC-8). Since then, the US has repeated this claim more than once. Russia strongly dismissed it and struck back at the US with counterclaims that America had violated the INF Treaty.
