Russia has violated arms treaty by testing cruise missile: US

Russia has violated a 1987 arms control treaty by testing a ground-launched cruise missile, a senior US official said late Monday, calling the matter ‘very serious. The announcement adds a new dispute at a time of already heightened tensions between Washington and the Kremlin over the crisis in Ukraine, with western countries accusing Russia of arming Ukrainian separatists and destabilising the country. The US concluded in a 2014 report that Russia had violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which barred it from possessing, producing or flight-testing such cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. President Barack Obama has sent a letter to his counterpart Vladimir Putin on the subject, which the administration official described as ‘a very serious matter which we have attempted to address with Russia for some time now,’ according to AFP.