Moscow is closely monitoring US efforts in the creation of new generations of weapons, including strategic arms, but will not be pulled into an arms race, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
“I would like to recall the words of President Putin about the fact that Russia will not allow itself to be pulled into this potential arms race, since it already made steps in terms of technological superiority to ensure its security and strategic parity years ago,” Peskov said, speaking to reporters on Tuesday.
Peskov added that the US desire to create new ground-based intermediate-range missiles which violate the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was responsible for the collapse “of this document, which was very important from the perspective of international security.”
The Kremlin spokesman’s comments followed remarks by US President Donald Trump Monday about the US’s efforts to create fantastical new weapons, some of which Trump said would be revealed in the near future.
“We have tremendous new weapons under development now. We have weapons that nobody can even believe. We’re going to be making some stops over the next four or five weeks. Some we show, some we don’t show,” Trump said Monday, speaking to reporters, while commenting on US plans to withdraw troops from northern Syria.
“But we’ve rebuilt our nuclear, we’ve renovated and rebuilt nuclear. We’re building submarines the likes of which they’ve never been even thought of before, the genius of them. Hopefully and hope to God we never have to use them, but we are doing what we have to do,” Trump added.
This was the second time Trump boasted about US military spending this month. Last week, speaking at the swearing-in ceremony for the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump boasted that the US has spent some $2.5 trillion on defence under his presidency, adding that the US now has “a modern, great military with the most magnificent and finest machinery, planes, boats, ships, weapons of all kinds.”
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia recently dropped out of the top five countries in terms of total military spending, committing about $61.4 billion to defence in 2018, down by about 3.5 percent compared with 2017. US defence spending was said to have grown by 4.6 percent in the same period, with spending now totalling some $649 billion.
Where are the top 10 military spenders located? What is their percentage change in spending from 2017–2018?
— SIPRI (@SIPRIorg) 29 апреля 2019 г.
Find out in the graphic below and in SIPRI’s latest report ➡️https://t.co/gY0BuUP01h#MILEX #GDAMS #GDAMS2019 pic.twitter.com/mau9aB9ae4
Despite its smaller defence footprint, Russia has committed substantial technical and financial resources to improving its strategic weapons amid US efforts to improve its anti-missile defence capabilities and to install these systems in Europe. In March 2018, President Putin unveiled half-a-dozen new weapons, including hypersonic missiles and nuclear-powered torpedoes, which he said would be able to evade all existing and prospective anti-missile defence systems, thus serving to guarantee global strategic stability.
