MOSCOW, Sept 7 (Reuters) – Russia criticised the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile system to NATO member state Norway, saying on Monday it dealt a further blow to the prospects for U.S.-Russia talks on strategic nuclear stability.
U.S. media reports said Washington had in August delivered to Norway a missile system that used Mk-41-style launchers capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the deployment posed a threat because the launchers could be used to fire missiles capable of reaching a substantial part of European Russia, including Moscow.
“Steps such as the deployment in Europe of U.S. ground-based intermediate-range missiles that pose a threat to the Russian Federation ‘reset to zero’, to put it mildly, the conditions for constructive dialogue with the U.S. on strategic issues,” the ministry said in a statement.
It added that Russia would pay “particular attention” to the deployment sites and command-and-control centres of U.S. missile systems and that they would become targets in the event of a military conflict.
U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken repeatedly of trying to conclude some kind of new arms control agreement with Russia and China, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday described plans to pursue multilateral negotiations involving China as “unrealistic”.
Separately, the Kremlin criticised recent moves by Norway to boost its defence by expanding its Finnmark brigade in the Arctic to include an artillery battalion and plans to deploy new long-range rocket systems by 2030.
Norway, which shares an Arctic border with Russia, says the war in Ukraine has shown that long-strike systems are essential on the modern battlefield.
Asked about the moves, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “without a doubt, such a military build-up, directed against our country … cannot but be perceived as a threat to Russia’s security.”
He said it constituted grounds for Russia to take its own additional measures to ensure its security and that the defence ministry and other government agencies were already doing so.
(Reporting by ReutersWriting by Maxim Rodionov and Alessandra Prentice; editing by Andrew Osborn and Alex Richardson)
