Russia is developing a space-based anti-satellite weapon that is “troubling” but poses no immediate threat, the White House has said. National security spokesman John Kirby confirmed the weapon was “space-based” but would not comment on reports in US media that it was either nuclear-capable or nuclear-powered. The weapon could breach the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the deployment of “nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction” into orbit or to “station weapons in outer space in any other manner”. Moscow downplayed the US claims, describing them as a “malicious fabrication” that were a White House ploy to try and secure the passage of a multibillion-dollar Ukrainian aid package through a resistant Republican-led House of Representatives.