OF THE
TIMES
Despite claims from Washington, the American move is motivated by America's self-interest, not anything done by Russia, told journalists on Wednesday Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov. ... The diplomat stressed that complaints from Washington are simply a pretext to walk away from the deal, which the current US leadership no longer wants.The recent events make it obvious that some forces in the US are not interested in allowing us to overturn through technical expert dialogue the erroneous - or even fabricated - information, which could resolve this issue once and for all. Hyping up this problem was not done to simply resolve it, obviously....
The missile, Gen. Matveevsky said, is an upgraded variant of the 9M729, a cruise missile launched by the Iskander-M launcher. Compared to the older version, the 9M729 has a heavier, more powerful warhead, and a more accurate but bulkier targeting system. This required increasing the missile's length and the size of its transport and launch container.
The size increase made it incompatible with the launcher used for the 9M728 version, so the defense ministry had a new launcher developed for it. It is bigger and carries four 9M729 missiles, compared to two for the 9M728 variant. He showed diagrams of both weapons for comparison.
The increased size had an impact on the range of the 9M729, which is not only below the threshold of the INF, but also about 10km lower than that of the 9M728. The bigger missile can fly up to 480 km, and was tested to that range during a major military exercise in 2017, the official said.
Gen. Matveevsky stressed that the 9M729 is a solid-propellant missile that is sealed in its container at the plant and cannot be modified in the field.
As for the US claim that one test of the missile breached the terms of the INF, Matveevsky assured the intelligence was wrong. The launch pad, from which the supposedly violating launch was made, is used by other branches of the Russian armed forces to test their weapons. Those include long-range strategic missiles, the tests of which are conducted with prior notifications of the US, as is required by the transparency rules between the two countries. The general provided statistics for test launches conducted from the site between 2008 and 2014 for reference.
The journalists were also given a chance to compare the 9M728 and the 9M729, which were displayed in their containers, and inspect the 9M729 launcher. According to Ryabkov, US military inspectors were offered a chance to take part in the Wednesday event, but Washington chose to ignore it. US officials reportedly said there was no sense inspecting the Russian missile since the Russian side refused to allow opening it up and seeing its classified internal structure.
Comment: Further reading on Karp's shady company: