Putin Just Kicked the Nuclear Arms Race Up Another Notch

Pontoon barges doused in radioactivity be damned: Russia’s ready to build more nuclear weapons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia will start churning out the kind of medium-range missiles that were previously banned under a Cold War-era treaty President Trump ditched in August.

“Of course we will produce such missiles,” Putin told an audience in the country’s far-eastern city of Vladivostok, adding he feels “quite sad” about reports that the U.S. might deploy those same weapons in nearby Japan and South Korea.

Putin’s speech marks just the latest indication that a renewed arms race between the U.S. and Russia is kicking into high gear, weeks after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the longstanding INF Treaty banning short and medium-range cruise missiles.

Washington officially nixed that agreement last month after accusing Moscow of cheating. The U.S. then proceeded to fire just such a once-forbidden missile off the coast of California into the Pacific Ocean, a stunt that provoked howls of protest from Moscow.

Read: Radioactive Barges Are Killing the Vibe on This Russian Beach After Deadly Missile Blast

On Thursday, Putin promised Russia wouldn’t be the first to actually deploy such medium-range missiles — but would follow suit if the U.S. does.

“We understand that deploying them in Japan or South Korea would be done under the pretext of preventing the threat from North Korea,” Putin said. “But for us it’s a significant problem, a very serious one, because these missile systems are going to be able to cover a large part of the Russian territory.”

A resurgent arms race with the U.S. has led Russia to start developing new kinds of nuclear missiles, which Putin has promised would prove “invincible” to American missile defense systems.

Read: The New Nuclear Arms Race Is Here. And Russia's Already Paying the Price.

Those new weapons include a long-distance nuclear torpedo that could wipe out a coastal city, and a nuclear-powered cruise missile intended to achieve infinite range, called Skyfall.

But the raft of new weapons has raised concerns about nuclear safety, even in the testing and development phase — especially after two-dozen Russians were killed or injured in accidents with high-tech nuclear hardware in Russia this summer.

The Skyfall cruise missile is widely believed to have been behind the radioactive blast that killed seven researchers on Aug. 8.

That explosion in Russia’s far-northern White Sea sent radiation levels at the nearby city of Severodvinsk spiking upwards to 16-times typical background levels, and left two radioactive pontoon barges stranded on a local beach for almost a month, with nothing to warn local residents to stay away but a red shirt stuck on two sticks.

Cover: Russian President Vladimir Putin opens a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019. Vladivostok hosts the Eastern Economic Forum on September 4-6. (Alexander Nemenov/Pool Photo via AP)