U.S. Suspends Nuclear Arms Control Treaty With Russia

The Trump administration said on Friday it was suspending one of the last major nuclear arms control treaties with Russia, following five years of heated conversations between the two powers that failed to resolve a long-running American accusation that Moscow is violating the Reagan-era agreement.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the decision, declaring that “countries must be held accountable when they break the rules.” He said the United States would terminate the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in six months unless Russia destroyed its growing arsenal of intermediate-range missiles and launchers.

“We can no longer be restricted by the treaty while Russia shamelessly violates it,’’ he told reporters in Washington.

So far the Russian government has been unwilling to admit that a missile it has deployed near European borders violates the treaty’s terms. Moscow asserts that the missile does not fly far enough to breach the limits established in an accord that, until recent years, was considered a gold-standard of arms control treaties and procedures to verify compliance.

The Russian government accused the Trump administration of looking for any excuse to get out of the treaty. Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, said the United States failed to negotiate in good faith.

“On the whole, the reluctance of the Americans to listen to reason and to hold any kind of substantive talks with us shows that Washington decided to crush the treaty a long time ago,” Mr. Peskov told reporters.

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