Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, Russia, Friday, June 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
BERLIN — Russia plans to deploy offensive missiles within striking distance of Western Europe if the United States follows through on its promise to deploy similar capabilities in Germany in 2026, Russian President Vladimir Putin said this weekend.
While attending celebrations for Russia’s Navy Day on Sunday, Putin said that his country would take “mirror measures to deploy” these weapons, which may be able to carry nuclear warheads, “taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”
Putin pointed out the perceived threat that American plans to deploy medium-range missiles to Germany by 2026 pose to Russia.
“The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” he said.
The White House on July 10 said that the U.S. was planning to “begin episodic deployments” of conventional missiles to Germany in 2026. The statement added that “these conventional long-range fires units will include SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons, which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe.”
It remains unclear which missiles Moscow would seek to use or deploy, Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation who researches Russian missiles and arms control, said in an email to Defense News.
The ground-launched Kalibr was the “obvious” choice, he said, adding that it “will be easy to develop and test in time for 2026.” Increasing the range of Iskanders or even reviving the mothballed Rubezh project may also be on the table.
Iskander missiles are already stationed in Kaliningrad and Belarus, while longer-range systems could be stationed deeper in Russian territory, increasing early warning times on both sides.
“There is also the 9M729 cruise missile, which the US believes entered service in the 2010s,” Michael Duitsman, a research associate at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said in an email to Defense News.
He pointed out that Putin explicitly mentioned the “coastal troops” in his Sunday speech, which include coastal artillery forces.
“The Russian military has used two of these systems, Bal and Bastion, to strike land targets in Ukraine,” said Duitsman, remarking that both could be upgraded with missiles of increased ranges. “With Oniks-M missiles, [the Bastion unit based in Kaliningrad] could hypothetically strike throughout the entirety of Poland in addition to their assigned anti-ship mission,” he said.
The USSR and U.S. in 1987 signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which outlawed this entire class of weapons with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. By 1991, both countries had destroyed their entire stockpiles -- a combined total of 2,692 missiles.
The Trump administration pulled out of the treaty in early 2019, alleging repeated Russian violations; in response, Russia, too, suspended its participation.
In his Sunday speech, Putin said that if the U.S. follows through on its missile deployment plans, Russia “will consider ourselves free from the previously imposed unilateral moratorium on the development of intermediate and shorter-range strike weapons.” The creation of such systems, he said, was “in its final stage.”
“We are entering a new Euromissile crisis,” said Nikolai Sokov, the senior fellow at the VCDNP. He added that, unlike Gorbachev, who was instrumental to the INF treaty’s success, Putin was less likely to make concessions. “A stand-off is more likely, and an agreement is less likely than was the case in the 1980s,” Sokov said.
Linus Höller is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He covers international security and military developments across the continent. Linus holds a degree in journalism, political science and international studies, and is currently pursuing a master’s in nonproliferation and terrorism studies.
