Jul 28, 2014 2 min read

WASHINGTON – The United States concluded Russia violated a landmark arms control treaty by testing a prohibited ground-launched cruise missile, according to senior U.S. officials, a finding that was conveyed by President Barack Obama to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in a letter Monday.

It is the most serious allegation of an arms control treaty violation the Obama administration has leveled against Russia and adds another dispute to a relationship already burdened by tensions over the Kremlin’s support for separatists in Ukraine and its decision to grant asylum to Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.

At the heart of the issue is the 1987 treaty that bans medium-range missiles, which are defined as ground-launched ballistic or cruise missiles capable of flying 300 to 3,400 miles. That accord, which was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who was then the Soviet leader, helped seal the end of the Cold War and was regarded as a cornerstone of U.S. and Russian arms control efforts. Obama administration officials concluded by the end of 2011 the cruise missile test was a compliance concern, officials said. Rose Gottemoeller, the State Department’s senior arms control official, first raised the violation concern with Russian officials in May 2013.

In his letter to Putin, Obama underscored his interest in a high-level dialogue with Moscow with the aim of preserving the 1987 treaty and discussing steps the Kremlin might take to come back into compliance.

NATO’s top commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, said the violation requires a response if it cannot be resolved.

“A weapon capability that violates the INF, that is introduced into the greater European land mass is absolutely a tool that will have to be dealt with,” he said in an interview in April. “It can’t go unanswered.”

Obama determined the United States will not retaliate against the Russians by violating the treaty and deploying its own prohibited medium-range system, officials said.

“For the United States to declare that we are pulling out of the treaty in response to what Russia has done would actually be welcome in Moscow because they are wrestling with the question of how they terminate,” Stephen Rademaker, a former Bush administration official, told the House Armed Services Committee earlier this month.

“We shouldn’t make it any easier for them,” he added. “We should force them to take the onus of that.”