The head of the Russian military's general staff gave a sharp response Wednesday to US proposals to set up a network of "interceptor" missiles in central Europe to ward off potential attacks.
General Yuri Baluyevsky said Russian inter-continental missile systems would be more than a match for the planned US deployment — which Washington says is being planned not with Russia in mind but in case of attack from countries such as China, Iran and North Korea.
"Already in the press they are naming concrete countries that could be the site of a so-called … forward region in the United States' anti-missile defence system. One of those states is Poland, and it is not excluded that another could be Romania," Baluyevsky said in comments quoted by the ITAR-TASS news agency.
"This is territory that is so close to our state that the siting there of this forward region, which could include systems for detecting and hitting inter-continental ballistic missiles and their warheads, couldn't fail to concern us," Baluyevsky said.
"We can already say that current and future missile defence systems, created today, tomorrow and in the foreseeable future … will be successfully overcome by our inter-continental ballistic missiles and their warheads," Baluyevsky said.
Washington has said it hopes to set up around 10 missile interceptors in central Europe to ward off potential attacks with ballistic missiles.
The Pentagon says that no decision has been taken yet about where the missile defence system might be located.
The Russian general referred approvingly on Wednesday to President Vladimir Putin's recent state of the nation speech in which he warned of the necessity to keep up with the United States in the military sphere.
