Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reiterated on Monday that Russia was strictly against the placement of weapons in space.
"We stand against unilateral approaches to missile defense issues and against the placement of weapons in space," Medvedev said at a meeting with Russian ambassadors and envoys in Moscow.
As of 2009, there are no known operative orbital weapons systems, but several were developed by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Development of orbital weaponry was largely halted after the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and the 1979 SALT II Treaty came into force. These agreements prohibit weapons of mass destruction (but not other weapons) being placed in space.
In 2008, Russia and China proposed a draft international treaty to ban the deployment of weapons of any kind in space and to prohibit the use of force against space objects.
In 2009, the United Nations unanimously approved a draft resolution on Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures in Outer Space, also submitted by Russia and China.
The document envisions, in particular, that the predictability of military activities in outer space would "reduce the probability of emergence of sudden military threats in space and from space, would diminish ambiguities in the strategic situation in outer space and, consequently, would decrease the need for early preparation of states to neutralize such threats."
MOSCOW, July 12 (RIA Novosti)