On March 2, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin rejected accusations that he had revived an arms race by unveiling Russia’s new nuclear deterrent.
During an interview with NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today”, the Russian President said that the arms race had begun when U.S. President George W. Bush ended the 30-year-long Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002.
“My point of view is the individuals who is said that a new Cold War has started are not really analysts. They do propaganda. If you were to speak about arms race, then an arms race began at exactly the time and moment when the U.S. opted out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty,” Putin said.
While most main stream media promoted an announcement of Russia’s new nuclear deterrent as the beginning of a new “cold war”, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) took a different approach. Its spokeswoman Dana White claimed that the U.S. wasn’t “surprised” by Putin’s announcement.
“These weapons that are discussed have been in development a long time … We weren’t surprised by his [Putin’s]statements … The American people should rest assured that we are fully prepared,” White said.
Other Pentagon officials went into offensive and told Fox News that the nuclear-powered global-range cruise missile, which had been unveiled by Putin, is not operational yet and that it is still in the research and development phase. According to The Drive, one official even claimed that the US had seen the missile crashing in all of its tests .
When asked about these claims regarding the new Russian nuclear weapons, Putin dismissed these rumors and stressed that all the weapon systems that he revealed on March 1 had been successfully testes.
“All of those tests were successful. it’s just each of these weapons systems is at a different stage of readiness. One of them is already on combat duty. It’s with troops,” Putin told NBC’s presenter Megyn Kelly.
Putin’s new statement will likely cause another wave of rumors by the mainstream media, that appears to be determined to hold Moscow the responsibility for the current complicated situation in the Middle East and Europe.
