Yesterday at a regular session on issues of development of the Armed Forces and the Military Industrial Complex, Vladimir Putin stated that the construction of systems of global missile defense of the U.S. and their alliance was considered by Moscow to be an attempt to undermine the current balance of nuclear missiles, i.e. to destabilize the whole system of regional and global stability. “We were told that the missile defense system and its European segment are aimed at protecting Europe from Iranian ballistic missiles,” the President recalled. “However, the situation over the Iranian nuclear program has been settled, corresponding documents have been signed, but the work on missile defense systems is still continuing.”
Putin thinks that references to the Iranian and North Korean nuclear threat mask the real plans to neutralize the strategic nuclear potentials of other nuclear powers except for the U.S. and its allies, primarily Russia, as well as a desire to get crucial military supremacy, with all the consequences.
Therefore, Russia is working on strengthening its strategic nuclear forces, on missile defense systems, but at the first stage it is working on attacking systems which are able to pass through any missile defense systems.
Sergey Zhigaryov, First Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee on Defense, thinks that the illusion is being created that there will be no retaliatory strike. “Each country that joins NATO in case of a possible military confrontation automatically becomes our enemy. All the time we are afraid to talk about it in public, but there is nothing to worry about. The Americans talk about it publicly. The main mouthpieces of their political parties are saying that today Russia is enemy number one. The United States, with the military policy it is carrying out in Europe and around the world, is our main military rival and possible enemy. All the NATO countries will automatically become our enemies in the event of such a conflict. And they will put their territories and populations living in these areas under threat of a possible retaliatory strike,” Zhigaryov thinks.
According to him, Europe realizes that NATO is the main threat to European security. “The main donor of NATO, and today NATO's budget amounts to 900 billion dollars, is not in Europe. 75% of total expenditure on weapons of NATO is by the United States of America. Under the terms of the NATO bloc, 2% of GDP should be spent on defense. No member of NATO except the US can reach this parameter, even the United Kingdom. Nobody spends 2% of GDP on defense. Only the USA, the United States of America, needs NATO for many reasons.”
The Deputy Head of the State Duma Committee for Defense says that one of the reasons is the fact that “based on the regulations of weapons accepted in NATO, through European money they are developing their military-industrial complex and fill it with orders. They do not allow the military-industrial complex of Europe to develop. And what is the military-industrial complex? It's not just weapons. It is also new, breakthrough technologies. Thanks to the military-industrial complex we have the internet, the iPhone. Today the U.S. develops its science at the expense of European money.”
