MOSCOW — Russia will counter military moves by the U.S. and NATO with an array of new nuclear and conventional weapons, President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday as the military successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine.
At the same time, he emphasized that Russia will not enter a new arms race and will tightly control its military budget to avoid overburdening the economy.
Putin accused the West of using the crisis in Ukraine to reinvigorate NATO, warning that Moscow will ponder a response to the alliance’s decision to create a rapid-reaction “spearhead” force to protect Eastern Europe.
The statement appeared to signal that the Russian leader is determined to pursue a tough course in the face of more Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis that has sent Russia-West relations plummeting to their lowest point since the Cold War.
Addressing a Kremlin meeting on weapons modernization, Putin ominously warned the West against getting “hysterical” about Moscow’s re-arming efforts, in view of U.S. missile defense plans and other decisions he said have challenged Russia’s security.
“We have warned many times that we would have to take corresponding countermeasures to ensure our security,” Putin said, adding that he would now take personal charge of the government commission overseeing military industries. “I would like to underline that we only take retaliatory steps.”
Putin claimed that some in the West would like to pull Russia into a new arms race, but “we will not enter such race, it’s absolutely excluded.”
He argued that Russia needs to upgrade its arsenals to replace Soviet-designed weapons approaching the end of their designated lifetime.
Putin’s comments came as the European Union was mulling a new wave of sanctions against Russia intended to persuade it to honor its part of a cease-fire agreement signed last week. A decision is expected later this week.
Putin said Russia’s weapons modernization program for 2016-2025 should focus on building a new array of offensive weapons to provide a “guaranteed nuclear deterrent;” re-arming strategic and long-range aviation; creating an aerospace defense system and developing high-precision conventional weapons.
He would not elaborate on prospective weapons, but he and other officials have repeatedly boasted about new Russian nuclear missiles’ capability to penetrate any prospective missile shield.