Putin Warns U.S. Over Missile Shield
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
MOSCOW — President Putin of Russia warned yesterday that American plans to deploy part of a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe would provoke a new arms race.
“What negative things are going on in Europe that we have to stuff” new weapons into the continent? Mr. Putin asked at a news conference in Vienna in remarks broadcast on Russian state television. “What has happened that calls for all this? Nothing,” he said, adding that deployment would spark a “new spiral of the arms race.”
America is negotiating to base interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic, both former Soviet allies, to guard against long-range missile attacks from countries such as Iran.
