Moscow and Washington maintain nuclear parity, but when it comes to new armaments, Russia is the world leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday.
"Russia and the United States maintain general parity of carriers and the number of warheads, but [Russia] is, unconditionally, the leader in promising developments ... And we do not only modernize the traditional assets at our disposal, but we create new complexes. In this sense, we can affirm that we are the world's number one in this direction," Putin told the Russian broadcaster Rossiya 1.
The president added that other countries would definitely have hypersonic missiles in the future, but by that time, Russia would likely have appropriate defences.
"I have always said and can repeat it now that leading military countries of the world will of course possess the same weapons that Russia has today. I mean hypersonic weapons. But since 2018 [when Russia unveiled its new hypersonic weapons], nobody else has developed this weapon yet. They will do it eventually but I think that we will be able to impress our partners by the fact that when they obtain this weapon, we will highly likely have means to counter it," Putin said. (ANI/Sputnik)
( With inputs from ANI )
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