MOSCOW, December 13. /TASS/. Washington is unable to furnish evidence to prove that Moscow violated the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range missiles (INF Treaty), because there is no such evidence, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.
"The Americans have failed to provide hard facts to substantiate their accusations. They just cannot provide them, because such evidence essentially does not exist," she said.
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"At the same time, they brush off Russia’s concerns," the diplomat stated. "There are launching facilities that are capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles at the US missile defense base in Deveselu, Romania, which everybody can see. The Pentagon plans to deploy the same systems to Poland in 2018, although their deployment ashore contravenes the INF Treaty."
In July 2014, Washington accused Moscow of violating in the INF treaty for the first time. Later on, the US has repeatedly come up with similar accusations. Russia has refuted them, accusing Washington of failing to comply with the treaty’s provisions.
The INF Treaty was signed in Washington on December 8, 1987, to take effect on June 1, 1988. In 1992, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s breakup the treaty turned multilateral, as Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine joined in (until the elimination of the missiles of this class). The INF Treaty applied to operational and non-operational ground-launched missiles having an intermediate range (1,000 to 5,500 kilometers) and shorter range (from 500 to 1,000 kilometers). The Soviet Union eliminated 1,846 missiles, and the United States, 846.