I think it’s more Putin trying to pull the Reagan “Star wars” trick and get the USA to spend a fortune responding to a non-existent threat.
Three problems though. Firstly, I don’t think the US sees the weapons as a threat worth responding too; Secondly they don’t see Russia as an existential threat any more (they saw communism as an existential threat, a capitalist Russia, not so much; lastly the US attention has switched to concentrating on China.