Obama removed a major irritant in relations earlier this year by scrapping the previous administration's plans to place interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic — deployments Russia treated as a threat.
The Kremlin has praised Obama for the decision, but Russian officials have also said they want to know more about the sea- and land-based systems the U.S. plans to put in place instead.
Putin said that Russia has no intention to build a missile shield of its own, but will have to develop new offensive weapons to offset a future U.S. missile defense.
"In order to preserve a balance while we aren't planning to build a missile defense of our own, as it's very expensive and its efficiency is not quite clear yet, we have to develop offensive strike systems," he said.
Putin added that the U.S. must share information about their missile defense plans if they want Russia to provide data on its new weapons.
Who'd have thought that halting our Bush-era "bad" missile defense system in eastern Europe to appease the Russians would just lead them to complain about our new and improved, nuanced "Obama" missile defense plan for eastern Europe?
If I didn't know better (because the Left says this so often), I'd say our problems with Russia actually aren't our fault at all, but stem from their own insecurities and lingering mental health issues.
Face it, the Russians are really just uneasy having anything but compliant satellite states on their borders. That's the real threat they see.
As for the new arms control agreement the Russians are holding up over this issue, tell Putin to take a hike. His nuke count will go down whether there's an agreement or not.
