- "The only thing for which Russia
is respected in the world and which makes us worthy partners in any talks
is our strategic rocket forces."
-
- MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's armed forces cannot fight a large-scale war
with conventional weapons and the country must maintain its nuclear forces
at all costs, presidential hopeful Alexander Lebed said Sunday.
-
- Lebed, a retired general who helped forge
a peace deal in Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya, said cuts have
robbed the armed forces of much of their combat capability.
-
- "A dangerous critical mass is being
accumulated, which is inadmissible for any normal country," he told
the Interfax news agency.
-
- Russia's military, crippled by a chronic
shortage of cash, has fallen on hard times since the collapse of the Soviet
Union. There is little money to repair equipment, train soldiers or modernize
aging technology.
-
- Lebed, a presidential front-runner who
has decried the neglected state of the military often in the past, said
Russia must concentrate on maintaining its nuclear stockpiles if it cannot
modernize other weapons.
-
- "The only thing for which Russia
is respected in the world and which makes us worthy partners in any talks
is our strategic rocket forces," Lebed said, according to the Interfax
news agency. "And this asset must be preserved."
-
- Lebed's call echoed a recent statement
by Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov, who said Russia must sink most
of its military funding into the construction of new nuclear missiles because
it doesn't have money for anything else.
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