Photo credit: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images)

Russian President, Vladimir Putin has ordered the country’s military to prepare a ‘symmetrical response’ to a recent test of a cruise missile by the United States.

A statement by the Kremlin on Friday said Putin, who issued the directive during a meeting of his security council instructed his government to analyze the level of threat posed by the aforementioned actions of the US toward Russia and take comprehensive measures to prepare a commensurate response.

The Pentagon announced on Monday that the US conducted a flight test of a conventional ground-launched cruise missile off the western coast of the country on Sunday.

According to the Pentagon, the missile hit its target after more than 500 kilometers of flight,. The test would have been previously banned under the now-defunct Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

The US withdrew from the INF Treaty with Moscow earlier this month after years of accusing Russia of violating the treaty through the deployment of its nuclear-capable SSC-8 missile.

The arms control pact had limited the development of ground-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

The US withdrawal from the INF follows its exit from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, another Cold War era treaty in 2002. Putin had earlier said that the withdrawal immensely provoked the Russian government.