Russia is considering ending its unilateral moratorium on the deployment of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, a senior Russian diplomat said, amid Moscow’s increasingly fraught standoff with the West over Ukraine and European security.

In an interview published Sunday by the state-run TASS news agency, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the moratorium, enacted after the collapse of a landmark arms control treaty with the United States, is “coming to its logical end.”

He accused Washington and its allies of failing to appreciate what he described as Russia’s restraint in the post-INF Treaty reality, adding that Moscow was “forced to respond” to the emergence of “highly sensitive missile threats.”

The moratorium stems from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), a landmark Cold War-era agreement signed by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The INF banned both Washington and Moscow from developing, testing and deploying ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.