GENEVA, August 20. /TASS/. The United States and other Western countries may trigger a devastating arms race as they implement large-scale programs to develop weapons systems for use in space, Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva, said.

"The risks of outer space becoming an arena for armed confrontation are no longer hypothetical," the Russian diplomat said at a plenary meeting of the 2026 Session of the Conference on Disarmament. According to him, individual Western countries and blocs directly mention near-Earth space as "yet another field for hostilities in their documents regarding space policy." Some of those, Gatilov noted, are already implementing major programs to develop weapons for use in, from or against outer space as he referred to the Golden Dome, a planned US missile defense project.

"These developments risk further destabilizing the international situation, drawing new divisive lines, and provoking other countries to take compensatory measures which may spark an arms race, this time in outer space. It will have a devastating impact on all of humanity," Gatilov warned. Russia has proposed drafting an international legally binding instrument to ban both the deployment of weapons in space and the use of force or threats to use force against or involving installations in outer space, he concluded.