{"id":300524,"date":"2024-12-17T07:12:22","date_gmt":"2024-12-17T07:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=300524"},"modified":"2024-12-18T10:07:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T10:07:37","slug":"vladimir-putin-threatens-to-lift-missile-restraints-in-warning-to-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=300524","title":{"rendered":"Vladimir Putin threatens to lift missile restraints in warning to west"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Seddon \u2013 Financial Times Dec 16, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Vladimir Putin has said Russia may lift its self-imposed restrictions on developing short- and medium-range missiles and would keep its non-strategic nuclear forces on constant combat alert, as he warned that the west was pushing Moscow to \u201ca red line we can\u2019t step back from\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Russian president said in a speech to the defence ministry on Monday that he was concerned about the US deploying short- and medium-range missiles abroad and warned that Nato was threatening Russia in Europe and \u201cbeyond its historical zone of responsibility\u201d in Asia.<\/p>\n

He added that Russia would step up production of hypersonic weapons \u2014 such as the new Oreshnik ballistic missile, which it fired at Ukraine for the first time last month \u2014 in response to any US deployments of short- and medium-range missiles in Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n

Andrei Belousov, appointed defence minister in a reshuffle in May, told the same audience that Russia\u2019s military needed to be ready for medium-term scenarios including \u201ca possible military conflict with Nato in Europe in the next decade\u201d.<\/p>\n

European leaders have warned since early this year that Russia is preparing for a broader conflict with the western military alliance beyond its continuing invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

But Putin \u2014 whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 triggered the current confrontation \u2014 said talk of a Russian threat to the continent was a \u201cmyth\u201d and blamed any escalation on the US and its European allies.<\/p>\n

He accused the US of \u201cencouraging the further escalation of the conflict\u201d in Ukraine by arming the government in Kyiv, including with advanced western weapons it has used for strikes deep inside Russian territory.<\/p>\n

Putin said Russia had taken the upper hand on the battlefield this year by capturing 189 towns, making 2024 a \u201clandmark in achieving the goals\u201d of the invasion. Russia\u2019s defence industry, boosted by record Rbs13.5tn ($130bn) spending in next year\u2019s budget, had helped bolster Russia\u2019s forces by developing new guidance systems for missiles and producing new kinds of attack drones, he said.<\/p>\n

Russia had also managed to sustain its forces by recruiting about 1,000 volunteers a day to fight in the war, Putin said. This year, he added, Russia had recruited 430,000 men compared with 300,000 a year earlier, helping it turn the tide against Ukraine\u2019s outmanned and outgunned forces.<\/p>\n

But the current levels of defence spending, Putin acknowledged, could not be raised \u201cto infinity\u201d at the expense of other priorities such as science, education, and healthcare.<\/p>\n

The splurge on defence spending has fuelled an economic boom but also sharply increased inflation and created a labour shortage in civilian sectors, with workers attracted by higher salaries in defence factories working three shifts around the clock.<\/p>\n

Putin said Russia was taking \u201cadditional measures to ensure [our] security and that of our allies\u201d but wanted to avoid getting \u201cdragged into a full-scale arms race at the expense of the social-economic development of our country\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrei Belousov, appointed defence minister in a reshuffle in May, said that Russia\u2019s military needed to be ready for \u201ca possible military conflict with Nato in Europe in the next decade\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=300524"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300534,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300524\/revisions\/300534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=300524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=300524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=300524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}