The US Air Force conducted the test of the mid-range robot from the Vandenberg Air Base in California on Thursday.

The test should have been performed with a prototype of a ground-based ballistic robot that has a range of over 500 kilometers, states Pentagon Defense Headquarters.

According to the Pentagon, the robot can be equipped with conventional warheads.

All robots on the ground with a range of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers were banned until August 2019, when the INF agreement between the USA and Russia expired. The agreement covered both conventional weapons and nuclear weapons. This was the second US test of this kind ever since.

US President Ronald Reagan and USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington after signing the ban on ground-based medium-range robots (INF). Photo: AP on December 8, 1987

Russian criticism

The trial was made just two days after Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Washington for talks with President Donald Trump and Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo. During the visit, Lavrov criticized the US decision to withdraw from the INF agreement. Russia demanded that the US extend the New Start Agreement, which is the last remaining agreement regulating US and Russia's nuclear weapons, according to CNN.

The New Start Agreement expires in 2021.

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin when they met at the G-20 meeting in Japan on June 29, 2019. Photo: AP

The United States withdrew

It was in early February 2019 that Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the INF agreement. The next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the same message.

According to the United States, Russia has broken the INF agreement by testing the robot 9M729 (SSC-8), which according to the Total Defense Research Institute (FOI) belongs to the same family as the robot Kalibr found on ships at sea. Among other things, Kalibr has been used by Russian submarines and surface ships to attack targets in Syria, according to previous information from the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Former US President Barack Obama was the first to accuse Russia of violating the INF agreement. Russia, on the other hand, has accused the United States of breach of contract.

Stockholm's international peace research institute Sipri supports the US view and states in the latest compilation of the world's nuclear weapons the Russian army is armed with the robot. Sipri reports a theoretical range of up to 2 350 kilometers. This means that it is a medium-distance robot on the ground as defined by the INF agreement, and was thus banned until August 2019.