President Donald Trump has confirmed that the US will pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, INF treaty that it had signed with Russia during the Cold War. He told reporters in Nevada last night that the United States is going to terminate the agreement and then it will develop the weapons unless Russia and China agree to a new deal. He said Russia has been violating the pact for many years.

The INF treaty was signed between the then US President Ronald Reagan and his USSR counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

It eliminates all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with the short range of 500 to 1,000 kilometres and intermediate-range of 1,000 to 5,500 km. Mr Trump said the US will not adhere to the agreement unless others were violating it.

Meanwhile, Russia has said Washington’s move to pull out of a landmark nuclear weapons treaty is motivated by a dream of a single global superpower. Russian state news agency RIA Novosti citing a foreign ministry source said Moscow has many times publicly denounced the US policy course towards dismantling the nuclear deal.