A low-level Russian diplomat who spoke at a conference in Virginia a few days ago created some stir - he was quoted by Financial Times as saying that "Russia could respond with force if the US put a "combat weapon" into space".
The Foreign Ministry spokesperson later tried to explain that the diplomat was misunderstood, but then more or less repeated his words - "If we cannot find understanding with the administration of the United States [about weapons in space] and find ourselves in a situation when we have to react, we'll certainly do it."
If this reminds you the arms-race rhetoric of the cold war it is because the Russian diplomats like to think they live in the world where this rhetoric works (alas, they are not alone). The reality is quite different - a closer look at the Russian military space program clearly shows that Russia has lost its capability to carry out serious development projects in military space and is very unlikely to recover it.
This is not to say that there are no good reasons why the U.S. plan of deploying weapons in space is a bad idea. It's just that a possible arms race with Russia is not among them.
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Now I see that Russia is bringing forward a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly on space weaponization:
"As a practical step ensuring the prevention of the deployment of any type of weapons in space, Russia plans to propose a draft resolution of the UN General Assembly on measures to ensure transparency and confidence building in space activity," [Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko] said.
Do you think this latest resolution is likely to differ significantly from the usual ones that are brought foward on this subject?
No, I don't expect any interesting proposals here. Most likely the resolution will be something along the lines of the text that Russia and China introduced at CD in Geneva some time ago. Quite frankly, I don't see what kind of resolution can have any impact at this point.