Russia not getting ready for war

Russia does not engage in military preparations, as a number of anti-Russian media claims, and the Russian Armed Forces open "both in solving their tasks and in ensuring regional and global stability, Chief of Russia’s General Staff Valery Gerasimov said today at the 8th Moscow International Security Conference.

"I want to refute the thesis about the military preparations allegedly being conducted by our country, which is exaggerated by the Russophobic media and used in the anti-Russian propaganda of the West," Gerasimov stressed, adding that a hybrid war has been waged against Russia for a long time, Interfax reported.

"The methods of waging a "hybrid" war were not developed by us. Western intelligence agencies have long been using them, first of all, against Russia. However, trying to disguise their actions, they blame our country without providing any proof. But people become less and less willing to believe this lie," Gerasimov said.

The deputy dean of the Faculty of Global Economics and International Affairs of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University, Andrei Suzdaltsev, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that Russia's actions aimed at ensuring national security are purposefully presented in the Western media as aggression. "Russia is preparing to prevent aggression from potential opponents, but in the West it is interpreted as Russia being an aggressor. The anti-Russian campaign is built up on the idea that Russia is a threat, first of all, for the EU countries" he pointed out.

"Any our steps are used for this purpose. Russia is changing its approaches to defense, developing it, reequipping the army. At the same time, the West prefers not to mention the statistics that Russia's capabilities in terms of conventional weapons are not comparable to NATO, which has much more powerful conventional weapons. According to this statistics, it's the West that is actively building up armaments, so any accusations against Russia of preparing for war are not substantiated," Andrei Suzdaltsev noted.

"It is a pity that this anti-Russian propaganda turns out to be effective for the common people in the West. Our efforts to ensure national security are being interpreted as preparation for war, with Russia as an initiator. This propaganda is quite successful. Usually they refer to the example of Crimea, forgetting that there was no aggression in Crimea, not a single person was killed there," the deputy dean of the Faculty of Global Economics and International Affairs of the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University stressed.