Kremlin slams plans for long-range U.S. weapons in Germany

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov complains about support for Ukraine from Germany, France, the UK and the USA | File Photo: Vladimir Smirnov/KREMLIN/dpa

By Ansgar Haase, Magdalena Tröndle and Ulf Mauder, dpa

Washington/St Petersburg (dpa) – Russia has criticized the planned stationing of long-range U.S. weapons in Germany as a return to the Cold War, after German leaders said the step was necessary due to the increased threat posed by Russia to European security.

“We are well on the way to a Cold War. This has all happened before,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state television on Thursday.

The agreement between Berlin and Washington, announced on the sidelines of a NATO summit on Wednesday, calls for placing long-range U.S. missiles in Germany by 2026 that would have the range to strike well into Russia. It will be the first time since the end of the Cold War that such weapons have been deployed on German territory.

Peskov accused Germany, the United States, France and the United Kingdom of being directly involved in the conflict in Ukraine. “And all the features of the Cold War are returning – with confrontation, with direct conflict between opponents,” he said. “All this is being done with the aim of undermining our country. Everything is being done to guarantee our strategic defeat on the battlefield,” Peskov said.

Russia must take all of this into account, he said. “This is no reason for pessimism. On the contrary: This is a reason to pull ourselves together and use all the rich potential we have to fulfil all the goals we have set ourselves in the course of the special military operation.” Moscow uses the term “special military operation” to refer to its war against Ukraine. Preventing Kiev’s membership of NATO was one of Russia’s reasons for launching the invasion on February 24, 2022.

Germany banking on conventional deterrence

German leaders justified the agreement with the United States by citing the increased threat posed by Russia to European security.

“We know that there has been an incredible arms build-up in Russia, with weapons that threaten European territory,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday on the sidelines of the NATO summit. There had been lengthy discussions on how to respond with conventional deterrence in addition to the NATO nuclear umbrella, Scholz said, adding that the deployment of long-range weapons had already been laid down a year ago in Germany’s first National Security Strategy. “That is why the United States’ decision fits in perfectly with this strategy, which we have been discussing publicly for a long time.”

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius also said he considers the planned stationing of U.S. long-range weapons on German soil to be an effective contribution to deterring Russian aggression. The step did not constitute an escalation, Pistorius stressed in comments to German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF in Washington on Thursday.

“We have a new threat situation. Vladimir Putin has shown what he is willing and able to do,” Pistorius told ZDF. “As we do not have a sufficient number of systems in this area, the Americans are temporarily deploying these systems until we have developed our own systems with our European partners.” He stressed the aim was to use conventional deterrence to ensure that there would never be a conflict with Russia, particularly “not a nuclear conflict.” “But that requires our own strength,” Pistorius said.

The German defence minister also noted that Russia has long been suspected of having stationed similar weapons systems in the exclave of Kaliningrad, “which means they are within absolute range of Germany and other European nations.” “We don’t want an escalation,” Pistorius told ARD. Instead, a signal had to be sent to Russia that “We are capable of defence and we are willing to defend ourselves, because we have a threat situation and I take every concern in the country seriously.”

Russia decries move, warns of response

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told Russian state news agency TASS in St Petersburg that Russian security would be compromised by such weapons.

“We will work out a primarily military response to this without showing nerves or emotions,” he said but did not give any details. Ryabkov noted that the NATO Double-Track Decision’s deployment of missiles in the 1980s was aimed at putting pressure on the Soviet Union to engage in arms control and disarmament talks, which ultimately led to major agreements. Ryabkov said he could not imagine what the U.S. and Germany were now aiming for. “They can hardly count on this experience being repeated. The situation has changed fundamentally,” he told TASS.

Scholz: Rearmament ‘no real surprise’

Scholz on Thursday played down the possibility of widespread protests or resistance to the return of long-range weapons to Germany, including from within the ranks of his Social Democrats (SPD), who have historically opposed weapons build-ups. “This decision has been a long time in the making and comes as no real surprise to anyone involved in security and peace policy,” he said.

As a young Social Democrat in the 1980s, Scholz himself took part in protests against the deployment of missiles. The U.S. missiles were withdrawn by 1991 following the end of the Cold War.

The new agreement with the U.S. calls for Tomahawk cruise missiles, SM-6 anti-aircraft missiles and newly developed supersonic weapons to be deployed in Europe starting in 2026, with the stated goal of providing better protection for NATO allies. Tomahawk cruise missiles have a range of up to 2,500 kilometres. The distance between Berlin and Moscow is 1,600 kilometres.

Joint Statement from United States and Germany on Long-Range Fires Deployment in Germany | July 10, 2024

The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future. When fully developed, these conventional long-range fires units will include SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons, which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe. Exercising these advanced capabilities will demonstrate the United States’ commitment to NATO and its contributions to European integrated deterrence.

Meanwhile, separately, the governments of France, Germany, Italy and Poland also signed a Letter of Intent at the NATO Summit for the European Long Range Strike Approach (ELSA), which the Embassy of France in the U.S. said would ‘allow the nations to develop, produce and supply capabilities in the field of long-range strikes, paving the way for cooperation aimed at strengthening our military capabilities and the European defence and industrial base,’ adding,that this this would allow Europe to develop “missiles with a range beyond 500 kilometres to fill a gap in European arsenals that they say has been exposed by Russia’s war in Ukraine” (emphasis original). The French embassy also said ‘new partners may be invited to join the initiative, which may also draw on European funding.’