Putin promises to build new nuclear missiles and deploy them near NATO countries

President Vladimir Putin said Friday that Russia will produce new intermediate-range nuclear missiles and then decide whether to place them within range of NATO countries in Europe and US allies in Asia.

Putin’s threat was vaguely worded: he said nothing about timetables for deploying the weapons, and by blaming the United States for bringing similar missiles into training exercises in Europe and Asia, he seemed to indicate that he was open to stood for negotiations.

But the timing was crucial, with the announcement coming just as major elections in Britain and France were about to begin, and days before the 75th anniversary of the NATO summit in Washington, which begins on July 9. And it appeared to be Putin’s latest attempt to raise the stakes in his conflict with the West, less than two weeks after his visit to North Korea rattled nerves in the United States and among American allies in Asia.

The United States withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, during the Trump administration, after years of U.S. accusations that Russia cheated on the accord. The treaty banned U.S. and Russian forces from having land-based cruise or ballistic missiles with a range of about 300 to 3,400 miles.

It was one of a series of treaty withdrawals that marked the end of more than half a century of traditional nuclear arms control, with the main agreements negotiated in Washington and Moscow. Only one such treaty remains: New START, which limits the intercontinental weapons each country can possess. It expires in February 2026.

Mr. Putin could have announced plans to strengthen his intermediate weapons force at any point over the past five years, so his decision to do so now was notable. In the meantime, the Pentagon has taken steps to deploy a number of customized weapons in Asia, ultimately intended to counter China’s growing nuclear power. But the United States has not permanently redeployed any of them to Europe.

In a brief televised video conference with his national security officials on Friday, Putin pointed to a series of recent military exercises in Denmark and suggested it was possible the United States was preparing to leave weapons there.

“We must respond to this and decide our further steps in this regard,” Putin said. “It seems that we need to start producing these attack systems and then, based on the real situation, decide where to deploy them to ensure our security, if necessary.”

But his motivation may simply be a response to recent U.S. actions in Ukraine. When President Biden lifted his ban on Ukraine’s ability to fire U.S.-supplied weapons into Russian territory — though he limited it to the area around Kharkov, where Russia fires weapons — Putin made clear that there would be a response.

During the Cold War, such missiles formed an important part of the Soviet military force. But in the early 1990s, the United States removed all its ground-based nuclear cruise missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and the Soviets disabled their SS-20 missiles. These steps were considered important steps in reducing tensions.

But a decade ago, Mr. Putin reversed the Russian move by deploying Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian region closest to Western European cities, which the Obama administration claimed violated the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. But President Barack Obama decided not to withdraw from the treaty, reasoning that doing so would abrogate all of Mr. Putin’s obligations. President Donald J. Trump reversed that decision.

The Pentagon has used the withdrawal to make plans to deploy weapons in the Pacific that would previously have been banned under the treaty. But when military exercises are held, they almost always involve mock-ups, and not real nuclear weapons.

The threat to produce more nuclear-capable missiles was also just the latest example of how Mr Putin has tried to influence his war against Ukraine by calling on the power and range of his nuclear arsenal. At the beginning of the invasion he ordered the weapons to be put on high alert – apparently that never was the case.

In October 2022, the Biden administration intercepted messages suggesting that Russian generals were planning to detonate a nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine, possibly at a military base. That crisis disappeared without any nuclear use.