Will produce same missiles as US cruise test but won't deploy: Putin

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia would produce missiles that were banned under the nuclear pact with the US which ended last month.

"We have already said publicly that we will not deploy - after the Americans have tested such a missile - we will not deploy it, we will surely produce the missiles of the same kind in the regions where the US missiles of such kind - the land-based missiles - will not appear."

Last month the US had tested a medium-range ground-launched cruise missile, just weeks after walking out the pact. The test occurred even as Russian President Putin urged the United States to begin new arms talks after the collapse of a Cold War nuclear pact between the two world powers.

Russia has blamed the Trump administration for unilaterally ending the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty signed in 1987 between the then US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.  

Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF), Putin while replying to a question said: "In case they are deployed in Japan and South Korea, we understand it will be done under a pretext of neutralising the threat from North Korea. But it also creates certain major problems for us because most likely these missile systems would cover a significant part of Russian territory including at the Far East."

"The fact that Pentagon chiefs said that the US plan to deploy them in Japan and South Korea does not make us happy, it is regrettable and causes some concern," the Russian president added.

However, Japanese President Shinzo Abe who was present at the forum denied the US had given any indication to deploy the missiles.

"I would like to make it clear that the US, of course, hasn't talked about deploying such missiles and there is no plan to do so," the Japanese president said.

Washington and NATO had accused Russia of developing the new 9M729 missile which they said violates the treaty, but Russia shot back saying that its range was short of 500 kilometres.

Putin had said earlier that if the US deploys new missiles, it "will be forced to begin the full-scale development of similar missiles".