Moscow insists not only on legal guarantees that the planned U.S. missile defense in Europe would not be a shield against Russian missiles, but also on technical evidence of this, Russia’s permanent envoy to NATO said. “We have said that to the Americans,” Rogozin said in fielding questions from reporters.

The United States has turned down a Russian request to have Russian equipment installed at a U.S. interceptor missile in order to verify American assurances that even the most advanced American interceptors are not fast enough to catch Russian heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles, he said.

“To read data from such [an interceptor missile], which hits a ballistic target kinetically, some equipment – sensors – should be installed on the [missile] itself and some should be on the ground,” Rogozin said. He added that the combat characteristics of an interceptor missile could not be evaluated visually.

However, there is a resolution by the U.S. Senate banning the use of foreign telemetry equipment in missile defense tests.

The United States has repeatedly invited Russia to send inspectors to watch interceptor missile tests.

However, “simply traveling somewhere into the ocean, standing on a barge and seeing through a pair of binoculars where some kind of shell is flying is not interesting at all,” Rogozin said. Going to the Moscow Planetarium would be a better pastime, he added.

This means all invitations for Russia to send military observers to interceptor missile tests are “a lot of hot air,” he said.

“We are, of course, interested to know whether we are being deceived or not when we’re told that even technically perfect missiles would be unable to fly fast enough to hit heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles from the Russian Federation that we have in service,” Rogozin said.

“We say, let’s check this. But no, this is impossible, they have the Senate resolution,” he said.