UN, October 13. /TASS/. The United States has been stepping up its missile shield capabilities to gain a strategic advantage by getting an opportunity to use nuclear weapons "at minimal costs," a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.
"By boosting its missile defense capabilities, the United States is seeking to gain strategic advantage through laying the basis for using nuclear weapons at minimal costs. This may have serious consequences in the security sphere," Defense Ministry spokesman Alexander Yemelyanov said during the Russian-Chinese briefing on missile shield issues on the sidelines of the first committee of the UN General Assembly.
He said that "first of all, the existence of the global missile defense system lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons by creating the illusion of impunity for the sudden use of strategic offensive weapons under the ‘missile defense umbrella’," he said.
Secondly, the US missile shield ambitions threaten the implementation of the 2010 New START treaty and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Yemelyanov went on.
"Thirdly, the US missile defense system poses a threat for the international activities in space and hampers agreements on the non-deployment of weapons in space. In the fourth place, the missile shield stimulates the growth of the nuclear and missile potential worldwide, thus provoking a new arms race," the spokesman said.