Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with chief executives of the world’s leading news agencies on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) to answer questions about many urgent issues on the international and domestic agenda.
Missile defense
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the U.S. missile defense system being deployed in Europe has the potential of turning into an offensive system and may be used against the Russian Federation.
“There’s no [nuclear] threat [from Iran], and the missile defense system [in Europe] is still being built, so we were right when we said they are deceiving us, they are not sincere with us referring to the alleged Iranian nuclear threat during the construction of the missile defense system,” Putin said.
“It is like this actually – they tried to deceive us once again,” he said at a meeting with the heads of global information agencies.
“We know approximately which year the Americans will get a new missile that will have a range of not 500 kilometers but more, and from that moment they will start threatening our nuclear potential. We know what will be going on by years. And they know that we know,” Putin underscored.
He stated that the United States, “despite all our objections, all our proposals on real cooperation, does not want to cooperate with us, rejects our proposals and acts in accordance with its plan.”
“You may believe me or not, but we have suggested specific variants of cooperation, they have all really been rejected,” Putin said.
He recalled that missile defense system elements have been built in Romania. “What have they constantly said? ‘We need to protect ourselves from Iran’s nuclear threat.’ Where’s the Iranian nuclear threat? There’s none!” Putin said.
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