US sending missiles near Russia borders may repeat Cuban missile crisis: Russian deputy FM
Tehran (KNA) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov says the US deployment of short or mid-range land-based missile systems in Eastern Europe and close to Russia’s borders could trigger a dangerous standoff akin to the Cuban missile crisis, which occurred in the darkest moments of the Cold War.
"If it really comes to deploying such systems on land, the situation will not just become complicated, it will escalate to the maximum level", Ryabkov told legislators on Monday.
The White House has reportedly been mulling deploying such missiles to Eastern Europe to further beef up its military there.
If Washington passes ahead with its plan, "we can end up in a missile crisis not just similar to the one we had in the 1980s, but to the Cuban Missile Crisis [in 1962]," he further warned, commenting on the collapse of the landmark 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).
The INF was signed in 1987 to ease a crisis in which US and Soviet missiles were placed within the range of European capitals. Under the treaty, both sides were banned from owning, creating and testing all ground-launch nuclear missiles with ranges from 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers and led to the elimination of nearly 2,700 short- and medium-range missiles.
Source: PressTV