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Putin vows fitting reply to new threat from West

MOSCOW: Russia has returned to the world arena as a strong nation that can stand up for itself even as NATO is expanding and the United States is setting up new bases near Russian borders, President Vladimir Putin said.

“A new arms race is being unleashed in the world. It’s not our fault. We didn’t start it,” he said in a keynote speech in the Kremlin on Friday.

“Developed countries, exploiting their technological supremacy, channel enormous funds — tens of times more than we do — into the creation of new defensive and offensive weapon systems.”

Mr. Putin said Russia would not allow itself to be drawn into this arms race, but would respond to the new threats to its security by deploying “new types of weapons that are not inferior and are even better [than what the West has].”

“To consolidate national security, Russia needs a new strategy of building its armed forces until 2020,” Mr. Putin said.

Speaking four weeks before presidential elections that are expected to bring his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev to power, Mr. Putin summed up his eight years in the Kremlin and outlined his vision for Russia till 2020.

Over the past eight years, Russia has leaped from economic, military and social meltdown of the 1990s to become the seventh largest economy in the world, leaving behind Italy and France. Last year, Russia had the highest GDP growth of the past seven years — 8.1 per cent. Foreign investment has increased sevenfold, reaching an all-time record of over $82 billion last year alone. Real per capita incomes and old-age pensions have grown 2.5 times over, and unemployment and poverty has reduced by half.

In the next 12 years, Russia must achieve a “qualitatively higher level of development” through diversification from reliance on commodities to the creation of “innovative science-based economy” exploiting Russia’s biggest asset — the rich intellectual potential.

“We have no other choice,” Mr. Putin said. “Either we become a raw material appendage to the global economy, which can eventually jeopardise Russia’s very existence, or we become a world leader and the best country to live in.”

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