Russia helping China to build missile-attack warning system, says Vladimir Putin
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Putin (right) attends a plenary session entitled The World Order Seen From The East in Sochi, Russia.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
MOSCOW (BLOOMBERG) - President Vladimir Putin said Russia is helping China to develop an anti-missile early warning system, as he criticised the US for abandoning a key nuclear treaty.
"We are now helping our Chinese partners to create a missile-warning system, a missile-attack warning system," Putin said at the Valdai Club conference of foreign-policy experts in Russia's Sochi on Thursday (Oct 3).
"This is a very serious thing that will dramatically increase China's defence capability, because only the US and Russia have such a system now."
Putin said US President Donald Trump's decision earlier this year to quit the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty had weakened international strategic stability.
The US has accused Russia of breaching the treaty, a charge Moscow denies, while also saying that new or renewed nuclear accords should include China's expanding arsenal. China has rejected that suggestion.