- MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia
is working on new nuclear missile systems that other powers do not have
in order to protect itself against future security threats, President Vladimir
Putin said Wednesday.
-
- Putin, speaking to armed forces chiefs, said although
international terrorism was one of Russia's main security threats the country
had also to keep its nuclear defenses in sound condition.
-
- "We know that we have only to weaken our attention
to such components of our defenses as the nuclear-missile shield, and new
threats to us could appear," Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
-
- He said research and successful testing of new nuclear-missile
systems technology was being conducted. "I am sure that in the near
future weapons will appear ... which other nuclear powers do not and will
not possess."
-
- But leading Russian military analyst Alexander Golts
said Putin's remarks were more likely to be an attempt to shore up the
country's international standing than an announcement of any developments
in its nuclear arsenal.
-
- "It's more or less a tradition that the Russian
leadership prefers to speak about our nuclear capacity, because after all
it's the last attribute of a superpower," he said.
-
- "Our nuclear armament is the single thing that makes
us more or less equal to the United States and it's very important from
a political point of view for Mr. Putin to keep mentioning it."
-
- More than half of Russia's defense budget goes on nuclear
programs, he said.
-
- Putin gave no further detail about what type of weapons
he was referring to or what shape new security threats could take.
-
- "We will continue to consistently and successively
build up the armed forces in general and its nuclear component," he
said.
-
- Russia's latest nuclear innovation was a test launch
in February of a missile designed to outwit Washington's planned $50 billion
missile shield.
-
- "It flies as a ballistic missile warhead in space,
but when it penetrates the atmosphere it begins flying like a cruise missile,"
Golts said.
-
- He said it made the American anti-missile plans more
or less useless. "And it means that we still think about the United
States as a potential adversary," Golts added.
-
- - Additional reporting by Tom Miles
-
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