section_path: History/Obama administration (2009–2017)/Increasing tensions during Putin's third term (2012–2015)
section_name: Increasing tensions during Putin's third term (2012–2015)
paragraph_text: Increasing tensions during Putin's third term (2012–2015)
  
  In mid-September 2013, the United States and Russia made a deal whereby Syria's chemical weapons would be placed under international control and eventually destroyed; President Obama welcomed the agreement that was shortly after enshrined in the UNSC Resolution 2118. The Obama administration was criticised for having used the chemical weapons deal as an ineffectual substitute for military action that Obama had promised in the event of use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. In George Robertson 's view, as well as many others', the failure of Obama to follow through on his 2013 "red line" and take promised military action badly hurt his credibility and that of the United States with Putin and other world leaders.
  
  Obama acknowledged Russia's role in securing the deal to limit Iran 's nuclear program that was reached in July 2015, and personally thanked Putin for Russia's role in the relevant negotiations.
  
  In May 2012, Russian general Nikolay Yegorovich Makarov said that there was a possibility of a preemptive strike on missile defense sites in Eastern Europe, to apply pressure to the United States regarding Russia's demands. Later in August 2012, it was revealed that an Akula -class submarine had conducted a patrol within the Gulf of Mexico without being detected, raising alarms of the U.S. Navy's anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
  
  On December 14, 2012, U.S. president Barack Obama signed the Magnitsky Act, which " U.S. travel and financial restrictions on human rights abusers in Russia". On December 28, 2012, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a bill, widely seen as retaliatory, that banned any United States citizen from adopting children from Russia.
  
  On February 12, 2013, hours before the 2013 State of the Union Address by U.S. president Obama, two Russian Tu-95 Bear strategic bombers, reportedly equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, circled the U.S. territory of Guam. Air Force F-15 jets based on Andersen Air Force Base were scrambled to intercept the aircraft. The Russian aircraft reportedly "were intercepted and left the area in a northbound direction."
  
  At the end of 2013, Russia announced that a rearmament of the Kozelsk, Novosibirsk, Tagil Rocket divisions with advanced RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missiles was going ahead.
  
  In July 2014, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of having violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by testing a prohibited medium-range ground-launched cruise missile (presumably R-500, a modification of Iskander) and threatened to retaliate accordingly. Concern in the U.S. was also caused by the test-firing in 2014 of the Russian RS-26 Rubezh Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capable of evading the existing anti-ballistic missile defenses.
  
  In early June 2015, the U.S. State Department reported that Russia had failed to correct the violation of the I.N.F. Treaty; the U.S. government was said to have made no discernible headway in making Russia so much as acknowledge the compliance problem.