A senior Russian official warned Saturday that Moscow could respond to Western sanctions by abandoning the latest nuclear weapons deal with the United States, cutting diplomatic ties with Western countries and freezing their assets. The statement by Dmitri Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, came as Russia’s ties with the West fell to new lows over its invasion of Ukraine.

Medvedev also warned that Moscow could restore the death penalty after Russia was expelled from Europe’s leading human rights group.

Western sanctions imposed new restrictions on Russian financial operations, including a draconian ban on technology exports to Russia, and froze the assets of Putin and his foreign minister.

“We are being expelled from everywhere, punished and threatened, but we are not afraid,” he added, mocking the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies as an attempt to vindicate their past “shameful decisions, such as a cowardly withdrawal from Afghanistan”.

Medvedev was interim President of Russia in 2008-2012 when now President Vladimir Putin had to switch to the post of Prime Minister due to term limits. Putin later regained the Presidency and Medvedev served as his Prime Minister for eight years.

Medvedev stressed that Western sanctions offer the Kremlin a trigger to completely overhaul its ties with the West, signalling that Russia could opt out of the New START nuclear arms control treaty, which limits the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia.

The treaty, which Medvedev signed in 2010 with then-US President Barack Obama, limits each country to have no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and provides for general on-site inspections to verify compliance.

The pact, the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, was set to expire in February 2021, but Moscow and Washington extended it for another five years.