According to the president, there was a unique situation when the Russian Federation in the defense sphere ceased to be in the role of a “catching up” state.
Russia is not going to fight with anyone and creates a situation that excludes from other countries even the intention to unleash an armed conflict with Moscow. This was stated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We are not going to fight with anyone, but we are creating such a situation in the defense field so that it does not occur to anyone to fight with us”, – he said in an interview with TASS for the project “20 questions to Vladimir Putin”.
The head of state recalled that Russia is in seventh place in the world in terms of the defense budget, inferior in this indicator to the USA, China, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain, France and Japan.
“Moreover, our expenses are reduced from year to year”, – he added. “And the expenses of other countries are growing”.
Putin noted that this created a unique situation when Russia in the defense sphere ceased to be in the role of a “catching up” state.
“For the first time we created such systems of offensive offensive weapons that are not still spread in the world”, – the president explained.
As the head of state specified, he means primarily the hypersonic shock complexes created in the country, including intercontinental ones.
He also recalled that if in 2000 the Russian army numbered more than 1.3 million people, now a little more than 1 million is enough, and the share of modern equipment in the troops has grown from 6% to almost 70%.