Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he recently offered US President Donald Trump the chance to purchase some of Russia's new weapons, including hypersonic missiles, purportedly to prevent an arms race.
The Russian president said that he told Trump in a recent phone call that the US could buy a hypersonic nuclear weapon Russia is working on, thus creating a kind of balance, but that Trump refused, telling him that the US was building its own weapons, Reuters reported.
"If you want we can sell you some, and this way we will balance everything out," the Russian president said he told Trump, according to Russia's state-run TASS news agency.
Putin delivered the comments — the truth of which is uncertain — at an economic forum where he again lamented the recent collapse of a Cold War-era arms-control agreement between Washington and Moscow, a pact that the US and NATO have accused Russia of violating.
