Putin:
People Do Not Understand How Potentially
Dangerous The Situation Really Is
‘We
know when US will get new missile threatening
Russia’s nuclear capability’
By
RT
June
20, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "RT"
- The
US anti-missile defense systems being installed
near Russia’s borders can be “inconspicuously”
transformed into offensive weapons, Vladimir
Putin has said, adding that he knows “year by
year” how Washington will develop its missile
program.
Talking
about NATO’s ballistic missile defense systems
in Eastern Europe, Russia’s president said that
the Americans are now deploying their missiles
at these military complexes.
“The missiles are put into a capsule used for
launches of sea-based Tomahawk missiles. Now
they are placing their antimissiles there, which
are capable of engaging a target at a distance
of up to 500 kilometers [310 miles]. But
technologies are developing, and we know around
what year the Americans will get a new missile,
which will have a range not of 500 kilometers,
but 1,000, and then even more – and from that
moment they will start threatening our nuclear
capability,” Putin said at a meeting with
the heads of international news agencies at the
St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF)
on Friday.
“We know year by year what will happen, and they
know that we know,” he
said, adding that Western officials “pull the
wool over [their news outlets] eyes,” who in
turn misinform their audiences.
The main problem, according to the Russian
president, is that people do not understand how
potentially dangerous the situation really is.
“The world is being pulled into a completely new
dimension, while [Washington] pretends that
nothing’s happening,” Putin said, adding that
he has been trying to reach out to his counterparts,
but in vain.
“They say [the missile systems] are part of their
defense capability, and are not offensive, that
these systems are aimed at protecting them from
aggression. It’s not true,”
Putin told the journalists, adding that
“strategic ballistic missile defense is part of an
offensive strategic capability, [and] functions in
conjunction with an aggressive missile strike
system.”
The “great danger” is that the same
launchers that are used for defense missiles can be
used to fire Tomahawks that can be installed “in
a matter of hours,” Putin noted. “How do we
know what’s inside those launchers? All one needs to
do is reprogram [the system], which is an absolutely
inconspicuous task,” he said, adding that the
governments of the nations on whose territories
these NATO complexes are based would have no way of
knowing if this had happened.
Washington
engaged in deception from the very start when it
claimed that it was moving its ballistic missile
defense east to counter “Iran’s nuclear threat,”
Putin said, pointing out that Tehran’s alleged
offensive nuclear capability now doesn’t exist –
largely thanks to President Obama’s involvement.
“So why have they now built a missile defense system
in Romania?” he asked.
While pointing
out that NATO keeps rejecting “concrete”
proposals from Russia on cooperation, Putin said
that US policy is now jeopardizing “the
so-called strategic balance... thanks to which the
world has been safe from large-scale wars and
military conflicts.”
By unilaterally withdrawing from the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Washington
“struck the first colossal blow at international
stability,” the president said. To maintain the
balance, Moscow has had to develop its own missile
program in turn, to which the US agreed in the
beginning of the 2000s, when Russia was in a
difficult financial situation.
“I guess they hoped that the armament from the
Soviet times would initially become degraded,”
he said.
“Today Russia has reached significant
achievements in this field. We have modernized our
missile systems and successfully developed new
generations. Not to mention missile defense
systems,” Putin told the international news
agencies, stressing that these moves are
counter-measures and not “aggression,” as
Moscow is so often accused of.
“We
must provide security not only for ourselves. It’s
important to provide strategic balance in the world,
which guarantees peace on the planet... It’s the
mutual threat that has provided [mankind] with
global security for decades,”
Putin concluded. |