Fearing West, Putin pledges biggest military buildup since cold war

Vladimir Putin, less than two weeks away from presidential polls, pledged $772 billion on arms over the next decade.

Russia needs to launch a major military buildup to prepare for life in a dangerous world where international law is breaking down, the West feels free to intervene in sovereign countries, and rivals could invade Russia to seize its rich trove of natural resources, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned.

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In his fifth?programmatic article detailing what he will do if he wins a new six-year presidential term?in elections that are now less than two weeks off,?Mr. Putin pledged, among other things, the biggest rearmament program in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Over the next decade, Putin writes, $772 billion to be spent?on 400 new intercontinental ballistic missiles, 2,300 late-generation tanks, 600 modern combat aircraft ? including at least 100 military-purpose space planes ? eight nuclear ballistic missile submarines, 50 surface warships as well as a whole new inventory of artillery, air defense systems, and about 17,000 new military vehicles.

"The processes of global transformation currently underway may carry all sorts of risks with them, many of them unpredictable," Putin wrote Monday in the government-owned Rossiskaya Gazeta. "In a situation of global economic and other kinds of hardships, it may be very tempting for some to resolve their problems at others? expense, through pressure and coercion?. It is no wonder that we already hear some voices saying that it is 'only natural' that resources of global significance should soon be declared as being above national sovereignty.? We must exclude any such possibility, even a hypothetical one, with respect to Russia. This means that we should not tempt anybody with our weakness."

He also warns that US plans to build a globe-spanning missile defense shield will have to be countered with new generations of weapons designed to keep Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent effective.

"We are forced to take decisive steps to bolster our national aerospace defense system to counter the US and NATO efforts in the deployment of missile defense," Putin writes. "One cannot be 'too patriotic' about this issue. Russia?s military response to the global US missile shield, including its European part, will be effective and asymmetrical, a match for US missile defense policy."

In previous articles, Putin has pledged to reform Russia's troubled political system,?deal with the rising threat of nationalism?to the country's political stability, and resolve the demographic crisis?that could see Russia's population shrink by nearly a quarter in the next four decades.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/jfafmmnpkZM/Fearing-West-Putin-pledges-biggest-military-buildup-since-cold-war

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