Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Council, has stated that Russia will not leave unanswered the US attempts to “do away with” the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), reported RIA Novosti news agency of Russia.   

“The new sanctions which [US President Donald] Trump announced against Russia, allegedly, for the violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, may be the most impudent from all those [sanctions] that the US has imposed,” noted Kosachev, “since the main violator here is attacking on he who has exposed it in the violation.”

Also, he stressed that Russia is fully interested in preserving the INF Treaty because, unlike the US, this accord has a strategic importance to Russia, as well as to all European countries.