Putin accused the United States at the beginning of the arms race

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that, in his opinion, the arms race between the United States and Russia began a long time ago - after the United States decided to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002, writes “Voice of America«.

However, in an interview with the American television channel NBC, a fragment of which went on the air on Thursday, Putin expressed disagreement with the allegations that the United States and Russia were embroiled in a new phase of the Cold War.

“From my point of view, those who declare the beginning of a new Cold War are not analysts - they are engaged in propaganda. If you are talking about the arms race, then it began just when the United States withdrew from the ABM treaty, ”the Russian president answered.

Fragments of the interview were made public after Putin announced on Thursday that Russia had made a “rapid, big step” in creating new strategic weapons, noting that many of these weapons are capable of overcoming the defense systems of the United States and other Western countries.

Speaking with a message to the Federal Assembly, the Russian president said his country was developing non-ballistic types of strategic weapons, against which the missile defense system (ABM) is meaningless.

“We began to develop such new types of strategic weapons that do not use ballistic flight trajectories at all when moving toward a target, and therefore the missile defense systems in the fight against them are useless and simply meaningless,” said Putin.

“All these years after the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the ABM Treaty, we have worked hard on promising equipment and weapons. This allowed us to make a rapid, big step in the creation of new types of strategic weapons, ”said the head of the Russian state.

In an interview with NBC, Putin revealed some additional details of the Russian weapons program.

According to him, all the tests of the newest systems of strategic weapons created in Russia in response to the step of the American side were successful.

“Every weapon system discussed today easily overtakes and bypasses the whole missile defense system,” Putin said.

“Some of them still require fine adjustment and refinement. Others have already been delivered to the troops and are in combat readiness, the Russian president added in an interview. - Each of these weapons systems is at a certain stage of readiness. Some of them are already on duty at the troops. "

As Putin pointed out, the money that was sent to the United States to create missile defense systems “was thrown to the wind,” since the latest Russian weapons are capable of overcoming them.

The Russian president expressed the opinion that the great powers should work together to protect against terrorists, and not create threats to each other.

According to Putin, he proposed to the United States to work together on missile defense systems, but was refused.

Recall Putin introduced a number of new Russian weapons, among which is a cruise missile with a nuclear power plant.