Missile defense

Putin Says Russia Is Helping China Build Missile Warning System

President Vladimir Putin said Russia is helping China to develop an anti-missile early warning system, as he criticized the U.S. 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. “This is a very serious thing that will dramatically increase China’s defense capability, because only the U.S. and Russia have such a system now.”

Putin said U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to quit the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty had weakened international strategic stability. The U.S. 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.