In the run up to Russia's election, presidential candidate and sitting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that he will increase military spending, claiming that NATO plans for a missile shield leave Moscow no choice.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed on Monday to modernize Russia's military in a drive to put it on an equal footing with Western armed forces, saying that Moscow should aim to "overcome any system of missile defense."
"We must not tempt anyone with out weakness," Putin wrote in the state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, laying out his views on national security in his sixth campaign article ahead of Russia's presidential election on March 4.
Putin said that he plans to spend 23 trillion rubles ($773 billion, 585 billion euros) in the next decade on 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles, more than 600 combat aircraft, dozens of submarines and other navy vehicles as wells as thousands of armored vehicles.
"In the next decade we must fully make up for our lagging behind," the prime minister said.
Missile shield
Putin struck out at the US and NATO's plans to build a missile defense shield to shelter Europe and North America from a nuclear attack. The Russian prime minister said that although Moscow cannot build a "costly" parallel shield, its strategic nuclear forces as well as its air and space defenses should be capable of defeating NATO's missile shield.
"Russia's military and technical response to a global American missile shield and its segment in Europe will be effective and asymmetrical," Putin said. "And it will fully correspond to the United States' steps on the missile shield."
The NATO missile shield has been a source of tension between Russia and the West -particularly the US - for years, with Moscow claiming that the shield would undermine its nuclear deterrent. Washington claims that the shield is directed toward states like Iran, which it believes is trying to build a nuclear weapon.
slk/dfm (AP, AFP)
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