Russia is no longer bound by a moratorium on the deployment of short- and medium-range nuclear missiles, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said, with former President Dmitry Medvedev blaming NATO’s “anti-Russian policy” and warning that Moscow will take “further steps” in response.
Medvedev, who has engaged in a war of words on social media with United States President Donald Trump, made his latest broadside after the Foreign Ministry’s announcement on Monday.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries’ anti-Russian policy,” Medvedev posted in English on the X social media platform.
“This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps,” he said.
Medvedev, who serves as the deputy head of Russia’s powerful Security Council and has made several hawkish comments on Russia’s nuclear capabilities in recent years, did not elaborate on what “further steps” may entail.
Last week, Trump said that he had ordered two US nuclear submarines to be repositioned to “the appropriate regions” in response to Medvedev’s remarks about the risk of war between Washington and Moscow.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries’ anti-Russian policy.
This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps.
— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) August 4, 2025
In its statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the developing situation in Europe and the Asia Pacific prompted its reassessment on the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles.
“Since the situation is developing towards the actual deployment of US-made land-based medium- and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian Foreign Ministry notes that the conditions for maintaining a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar weapons have disappeared,” the ministry said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last year that Moscow may have to respond to what they described as provocations by the US and NATO by lifting restrictions on missile deployment.
Lavrov told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti in December that Moscow’s unilateral moratorium on the deployment of such missiles was “practically no longer viable and will have to be abandoned”.
“The United States arrogantly ignored warnings from Russia and China and, in practice, moved on to deploying weapons of this class in various regions of the world,” Lavrov told the news agency.
The US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 2019, under the first Trump administration, citing Russian non-compliance, but Moscow had said that it would not deploy such weapons provided that Washington did not do so.
The INF treaty, signed in 1987 by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan, had eliminated an entire class of weapons: ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500km (311 to 3,418 miles).
In its first public reaction to Trump’s comments on the repositioning of US submarines, the Kremlin on Monday played down the remarks and said it was not looking to get into a public spat with the US president.
“In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty. This is an ongoing process, that’s the first thing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“But in general, of course, we would not want to get involved in such a controversy and would not want to comment on it in any way,” he said.
“Of course, we believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric,” he added.
The episode comes at a delicate moment, with Trump threatening to impose new sanctions on Russia and buyers of its oil, including India and China, unless President Vladimir Putin agrees by Friday to a ceasefire in Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
Putin said last week that peace talks had made some positive progress but that Russia had the momentum in its war against Ukraine, signalling no shift in his position despite the looming deadline.
