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US worked on INF Treaty-banned missile for several years, says Putin

SOCHI, October 3. /TASS/. It looks like the United States has been working on a new missile that comes under the scope of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty for at least several years when the treaty was still in force, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

"I think that the fact that the United States test launched such an intermediate-range ground-based missile shortly after it had announced its withdrawal from the treaty means that it had been working on it for a long time. Such technological solutions cannot be accomplished in a couple of months. It means it had been working on it for at least several years," he said at a plenary session of the Valdai international discussion club. "And as for the rest, they simply looked for a pretext and found it. I don’t think it was a right pretext because there were no grounds to accuse Russia of violating anything.".