Putin Warns Russia Will Respond to US Missile Deployment in Germany

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Sunday that Russia could deploy new missile systems in response to a planned US missile deployment to Germany and warned of a Cold War-style incident.

Earlier this month, the US announced it would deploy missiles to Germany in 2026 that were previously banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which prohibited land-based missile systems with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles.

The US withdrew from the treaty in 2019, but Putin said Russia has maintained a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of missiles prohibited by the treaty. He said that could change in response to the US deployment.

“If the United States carries through these plans, we will consider ourselves to be free from our unilateral moratorium on deploying intermediate-and shorter-range strike weapons, including measures to raise the capabilities of coastal defense troops of our Navy,” Putin said in a speech for Russia’s Navy Day in St. Petersburg.

Putin noted that the US missile systems would be able to quickly strike Russian territory. “The fly-in time of such missiles that can be eventually equipped with nuclear warheads will constitute about 10 minutes to reach targets on our territory,” he said.

The US announced its deployment would include Tomahawk missiles, which are nuclear-capable and have a range of over 1,000 miles. Tomahawks are typically used on US Navy destroyers and submarines since a land-based version was banned by the INF.

The US also said it will send SM-6 missiles to Germany, which signals it’s planning to deploy a Typhon missile system. The Typhon is a covert system concealed in a 40-foot shipping container that can fire Tomahawks and SM-6 missiles. The SM-6 can hit targets up to 290 miles away, below the levels previously banned by the INF. The US has recently deployed Typhon launchers for drills in the Philippines and Denmark.

Putin said Russia was in the process of developing similar missile systems. “Today we are at the final stage of developing a number of such systems. We will take measures in kind to deploy them, taking into account the moves by the United States and its minions in Europe and other regions of the world,” he said.

The Russian leader warned that the  “situation is reminiscent of the events of the Cold War period.” Before the INF was signed in 1987, the Soviet Union had land-based nuclear-armed missiles deployed in its western territory that could hit western Europe, and the US had similar systems deployed that could hit Soviet territory.