Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is not going to fight against anyone and it is laying the groundwork so that other countries will not have the slightest urge to unleash an armed conflict with Moscow.
"We are not going to fight against anyone. We are going to create conditions so that nobody wants to fight against us," he told TASS in an interview for the project entitled "20 Questions with Vladimir Putin".
Putin stressed that as far as defense spending goes, Russia ranked seventh in the world, trailing the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France and even Japan. "Moreover, our annual expenditures are falling," he added. "In contrast, other countries’ spending has been rising."
The Russian head of state pointed to a unique situation where Russia was no longer lagging behind from the standpoint of its defense capabilities.
"For the first time, we have created such offensive strike systems which the world has never seen. Now they are chasing after us trying to catch up. This is a unique situation. This has never happened before," Putin noted, adding that he was referring to the newly-created hypersonic attack systems.
