Putin edges closer to renewed arms race

MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the Trump administration Wednesday against basing intermediate-range missiles in Europe, saying that Moscow would respond by deploying new weapons of its own that could directly target Washington.

Although the threat did not mark a change in Russian doctrine, it raised the ante in what could be a new arms race between the two countries.

Russia and the United States already have stockpiles of hundreds of nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching each other's territory, a vestige of Cold War hostilities. But Putin's annual state of the nation address to both houses of parliament and his government ministries was a warning that a nuclear-armed standoff between the two countries appears in danger of returning.

It came less than a month after President Donald Trump said the United States was withdrawing from the 1987 Intermediate