MOSCOW, August 4. /TASS/. Now that Russia has done away with its self-imposed restrictions on deploying intermediate-and shorter-range missiles (INF), it can deploy them to different locations based on their specific characteristics, Director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics Vasily Kashin told TASS.
"Certainly, the specific deployment sites will be determined with the characteristics of a specific type of weapon in mind. They will vary. It is obvious that most of them should be deployed in the north-western direction, and the others - in the southern area of the country’s European part," he said.
Kashin also reiterated that in its heyday, the Soviet Union deployed a small number of intermediate-range missiles in the country’s northeast, in Chukotka, from where they could have delivered strikes on substantial parts of North America. "At the end of the Cold War, it was planned to deploy Pioneer complexes in the Anadyr area from where they could reach even some parts of the continental US and were even capable of striking such a major city as San Francisco," the expert pointed out.
In general, the political analyst said that the end of moratorium was long overdue. "The first instance of using an Oreshnik missile indicated that Russia is abandoning it but now it has been completely formalized. This is a measure that has been long in the making. I hope that it will be fully implemented. Because choosing not to deploy intermediate-and shorter-range ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles en masse has been very seriously limiting our capabilities," he emphasized.
