MOSCOW. Aug 22 (Interfax) - The State Duma Defense Committee has no information indicating that a Russian nuclear-powered missile might have crashed into a sea during tests, Duma Defense Committee First Deputy Chairman Andrei Krasov told Interfax on Wednesday.
"There is no such information," Krasov said when asked if the committee was aware of any such incident.
The publication of such unverified reports is an element of unfair competition on the part of the U.S., which is trying to restore the reputation of its weapons on the global market as the popularity of Russian weapons grows, he said.
"I doubt that these are true reports. This is unfair competition and one of the pieces of evidence that when sanctions no longer work, they begin to look for other moves and tricks," Krasov said.
Russian weapons have a very good reputation now, and the Russian Armed Forces are being massively rearmed with state-of-the-art weapons and military hardware that no other army possesses, he said.
"There is a long queue of buyers of combat-tested Russian weapons, and this queue keeps growing, and it's natural that some gentlemen across the ocean don't like the fact that their defense sector is sagging and they have nothing new to offer. That's why they're looking for a mote in someone else's eye and don't see the beam in their own," he said.
The CNBC television channel reported earlier that Russia was searching for the place where a nuclear-powered missile fell into the Barents Sea during a failed test late in 2017. Three vessels may be involved in the operation, CNBC reported.