The United States has formally withdrawn from a 1987 nuclear missile pact signed by then-US President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty banned all nuclear and non-nuclear land-based missiles with ranges of 500 – 5,500 km (310 – 3,400 miles). In February, the US accused Russia of deliberately breaching the treaty and gave them a six-month deadline to comply with the treaty - these allegations were echoed by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The cruise missile in question is the nuclear-capable Novator 9M729 missile, known as SSC-8 by NATO allies. With the end of the INF Treaty, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres cautioned that “an invaluable brake on nuclear war” has been lost.
