WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump said the United States would withdraw from the Cold War Cold War nuclear weapons treaty because of Russian abuses, a move a Moscow official said was a serious attempt to blackmail.
"Russia has not, unfortunately, complied with the agreement, so we will terminate this agreement and withdraw from it," Trump told reporters after a rally in Nevada. "We will not allow them to violate a nuclear agreement and to go out and manufacture weapons. While we are barred from doing so, We respect the agreement, but Russia has not, unfortunately, respected it. "
Trump said the United States would develop these weapons unless Russia and China agreed to stop developing them.
In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by the TASS news agency as saying that a unilateral withdrawal from the treaty would be "a very dangerous step."
Ryabkov said it was Washington who did not abide by the treaty, not Moscow, and said the Trump administration was exploiting the treaty in an attempt to blackmail the Kremlin, endangering global security.
"We see an effective attempt to warn Russia, and of course we will not accept any warnings or extortion methods," Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
Ryabkov said that if the United States withdrew, Russia would have no choice but to respond, including unspecified "military-technical" measures. "But we prefer not to get that far," Ryabkov said.
The medium-range nuclear weapons treaty, negotiated by then US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, requires the two countries to remove short- and medium-range nuclear and conventional missiles.