August 6, 2025 - 7:00am
Russia has announced that it will no longer abide by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, meaning that it could again use short- and intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles. Although the US withdrew in 2019, accusing Russia of having violated the agreement, Moscow had until now observed a self-imposed unilateral moratorium on the deployment of such arms.
Why the sudden change? It would be easy to consider this merely the latest bout of sabre-rattling in the ongoing tit-for-tat exchanges between US President Donald Trump and Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev. Last week, Trump said he was sending nuclear-capable submarines to the “appropriate regions” in response to Medvedev’s own nuclear threats.
Yet, on one point, it may actually be worth listening to what the Kremlin is saying. Moscow has a long history of leveraging nuclear threats to achieve its aims. It is therefore unlikely to be mere coincidence that its statement simultaneously raised concerns about Washington and Berlin’s plans to deploy Typhon and Dark Eagle missile systems on German territory from 2026. With Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Warsaw and even Berlin itself all within range of Moscow’s own deployed missile systems, this may be another case of Russia adopting a strategy of nuclear blackmail based around threatening Nato capitals, this time in a bid to get Germany and the US to back down.
The potential ramifications don’t end there, and there is a newly heightened risk of a nuclear incident. The Robert Lansing Institute notes that, following Moscow’s exit from the INF Treaty, the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear-capable systems such as “the modernized 9M729 Iskander-M or RS-26 Rubezh increases the chance of a sudden or accidental nuclear exchange due to shorter flight times and ambiguous payloads”.
That is before one considers the heightened risk to Ukraine. Back in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Moscow was mass-producing its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, which it had used to strike Dnipro last November. Lest this seem an idle threat, last week the Russian leader revealed that Oreshniks will be positioned in Belarus by the end of the year.
It is currently impossible to know for sure what impact Oreshniks may have on the battlefield in Ukraine. November’s hit didn’t carry an explosive charge and so we have not witnessed what Oreshniks are capable of when fully loaded. We also do not know how many will be deployed, what battlefield strategies they will serve, and whether Russia truly believes its own propaganda about the new weapon.
Yet mass production implies a strong degree of faith. As a further sign that this could have a significant impact on the war in Ukraine, Putin has claimed that the Oreshnik travels at 10 times the speed of sound, cannot be intercepted, and is so powerful that the use of several in one conventional strike could prove as devastating as a nuclear strike. It also has a range that violates the INF Treaty. Should allies attempt to assist Ukraine, perhaps by supplying some form of defensive weaponry, we have seen the nuclear blackmail that awaits European capitals.
It would be easy and comforting to treat this as another of Russia’s empty threats. It would also be wrong. Moscow’s exit from the INF Treaty is not intended to intimidate Trump, but to clear the path for the potentially devastating use of Oreshniks in Ukraine. When Medvedev tauntingly posted to “expect further steps”, he addressed it to “all our opponents”. He was likely thinking of neither Washington nor Brussels, but of Kyiv.
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