Russia vows ‘military response’ to U.S. missile deployments in Germany

Russia is preparing military countermeasures in response to the planned U.S. deployment of longer-range, ground-based missiles in Germany, the Russian deputy foreign minister said Thursday, adding that the U.S. move was “destructive to regional safety and strategic stability.”

“Without nerves, without emotions, we will develop a military response, first of all, to this new game,” the deputy minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, told Interfax, a Russian news agency.

In a statement published by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Ryabkov said that Moscow had anticipated the decision and had started preparing “compensating countermeasures” in advance.

In a joint statement, the United States and Germany said Washington would begin “episodic deployments” of the missiles in Germany in 2026, including those that are “significantly longer range” than the ones deployed throughout Europe.

The statement said that the periodic deployments would be preparation for “an enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.”

Ultimately, the weapons will include SM-6 missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons, the statement said.

“What we are deploying to Germany is a defensive capability like many other defensive capabilities we have deployed across the alliance, across the decades,” Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, told reporters Thursday, referring to the 32 nations of NATO. “So more Russian saber rattling obviously is not going to deter us from doing what we think is necessary to keep the alliance as strong as possible.”

“And beyond that, we’ll have our opportunities to understand better what the Russian position is on this, and we will respond,” he added.

The party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said the move was needed to deter and contain Russia.

“In view of the modernization of the Russian nuclear arsenal and Russia’s aggressive policy, which threatens Germany’s and Europe’s security, this is the right thing to do,” Nils Schmid, a party spokesperson, said in an email.

According to a U.S. military official, the weapons will include a new launcher called Typhon, which is a modified 40-foot shipping container that can conceal up to four missiles that rotate upward to fire.

The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the planned deployment, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. Army began working on Typhon soon after the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019.

In April, the Army sent a battery of Typhon launchers to the Philippines.

The hypersonic missiles that the Pentagon is testing are fired from a different kind of mobile launcher. They are designed to fly much farther than Tomahawk and at speeds in excess of five times the speed of sound.

The U.S. military move had echoes of the Cold War, when Moscow and Washington undertook competing missile deployments, with U.S. allies in Europe caught in between.

In the late 1970s, the Soviet Union deployed mobile, intermediate-range, nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, known as SS-20s or Pioneers, within striking distance of Western European capitals and military installations, setting off a missile crisis in the heart of Europe.

In response, the United States agreed to deploy nuclear-capable Pershing II ballistic missiles in Western Europe, as well as a mobile truck-based launcher called the Ground-Launch Cruise Missile, which carried early versions of the Tomahawk armed with a nuclear warhead, starting in 1983, if a disarmament agreement could not be secured by then with the Soviet Union.

With no agreement forthcoming, the deployments went forward, prompting significant protests and discontent in West Germany, which at the time was on the front lines of the Cold War.

The crisis did not abate until the 1987 signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The agreement removed the weapons from Europe, prohibiting nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

The treaty remained in force until the Trump administration pulled out of it in 2019, citing violations by Russia. The administration argued that Russia’s violation of the treaty was leaving the United States and its allies at a disadvantage, because they were still abiding by its rules.

The United States accused Moscow of violating the agreement with the development of a new cruise missile, the 9M729, also known as the SSC-8. Washington said that the missile could fly at ranges in violation of the agreement. Moscow said that the missile’s range was shorter and denied violating the pact.

The dissolution of the Cold War-era agreement came amid deteriorating relations between Moscow and Washington and signaled the possibility of a renewed arms race, including competing missile deployments in Europe.

Christoph Heusgen, chair of the Munich Security Conference, commended the missile decision.

“This is the only language that Russia understands,” Heusgen, who was foreign and security policy adviser under Chancellor Angela Merkel, said in an interview. “And this is a position of strength. I think to send this message that yes, we are ready to continue our policy of deterrence that proved to be very successful during the Cold War – I think that this is the right message at the right time.”

The news about the coming missile deployments in Germany was made during a NATO summit in Washington, where the alliance also announced that a U.S. missile defense base in Poland capable of intercepting ballistic missiles was “mission ready” after years of development.

For years, President Vladimir Putin of Russia has cited the U.S. deployment of missile infrastructure in Europe as an aggressive move aimed at containing Moscow’s capabilities. At the end of June, Putin said at a meeting with security officials that Russia should relaunch production of ground-based nuclear-capable missiles of shorter and intermediate range.

Speaking about the NATO summit, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry S. Peskov, said Thursday that tensions were “escalating on the European continent” and that Moscow saw the deployment of NATO infrastructure closer to its border as “a very serious threat.”

“All of this will require us to take thoughtful, coordinated, effective responses to deter NATO, to counteract NATO,” Peskov told journalists, according to Interfax.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.