The West took Russia's signal to lift the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles seriously, and this had a sobering effect. This was stated by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
„The rather muted and unclear public reaction there to our announcement attracted attention. This was expected. The logic here is as follows: the Russians took an important and significant step, let's not add points to them by demonstrating our own emotions and anxiety about this. We see this too. "We have quite reliable sources confirming that the desired result has been achieved and the sobering effect is taking place," the deputy minister said on the air of the Rossiya-24 television channel.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed between the USSR and the United States in 1987. It does not allow the deployment of missile launchers, ground-based ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 km. In 2019, the United States withdrew from this agreement. Moscow was ready not to produce or deploy missiles until Washington deployed these systems in some region of the world.
Ryabkov expressed hope that the upcoming meeting of Russian and US presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump would give impetus to the normalization of relations between the countries.
“We hope that the upcoming summit will give impetus to the normalization of bilateral relations, which will allow us to move forward in resolving such issues“, the diplomat told “Izvestia“.
“Although it is clear that the leaders will focus on completely different topics“, Ryabkov added.
On August 8, Trump said that he expected to meet with Putin in Alaska on August 15. Plans for these talks were then confirmed by the Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov. He said the leaders would focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term peaceful settlement to the Ukrainian crisis. The Kremlin expects the next meeting between Putin and Trump to take place on Russian territory, Ushakov said.