US reiterates intent to forge ahead with missile defense despite Russian opposition

{mosads}The United States says NATO plans for a missile defense shield in Europe are not aimed at Russia, but the Kremlin believes the shield would defang its nuclear deterrence capacities.

President Vladimir Putin has vowed to retaliate if NATO and the United States go forward with the third phase of the missile defense shield, the deployment of land-based sites in Poland by 2018. Last week, Russia tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to penetrate NATO’s new missile defense shield, describing it as “one of the … measures being developed by Russia’s military and political leadership in response to the U.S. deployment of a global anti-missile system.”