This post first appeared on Russia Insider
Putin's historic, game-changing speech yesterday announced 5 key new technological weapons breakthroughs, putting Russia far ahead of NATO and the US, making its weapons, as Putin underlined many times, 'invincible'.
Here is the part of the speech where he explains why Russia felt compelled to develop the weapons.
We've excerpted the parts of the speech where he describes each weapon, and will be posting them here. The other weapons are:
And Putin's explanation of why Russia developed all these weapons:
Transcript below:
I will say once again what we have repeatedly told our American and European partners who are NATO members:
00:07
we will make the necessary efforts to neutralise the threats posed by the deployment of the US global missile defence system.
00:15
We mentioned this during talks, and even said it publicly.
00:20
Back in 2004, after the exercises of the strategic nuclear forces when the system was tested for the first time,
00:31
I said the following at a meeting with the press (It is embarrassing to quote myself, but it is the right thing to say here):
00:38
So, I said: “As other countries increase the number and quality of their arms and military potential, Russia will also need to ensure it has new generation weapons and technology.
00:49
In this respect, I am pleased to inform you that successfully completed experiments during these exercises enable us to confirm that in the near future,
01:06
the Russian Armed Forces, the Strategic Missile Forces, will receive new hypersonic-speed, high-precision new weapons systems
01:14
that can hit targets at inter-continental distance and can adjust their altitude and course as they travel.
01:25
This is a very significant statement because no country in the world as of now has such arms in their military arsenal.”
01:36
End of quote.
01:38
Of course, every word has a meaning because we are talking about the possibility of bypassing interception boundaries.
01:47
Why did we do all this? Why did we talk about it?
01:51
As you can see, we made no secret of our plans and spoke openly about them, primarily to encourage our partners to hold talks.
01:59
Let me repeat, this was in 2004.
02:02
It is actually surprising that despite all the problems with the economy, finances and the defence industry, Russia has remained a major nuclear power.
02:16
No, nobody really wanted to talk to us about the core of the problem, and nobody wanted to listen to us.
02:25
So, listen to us now!
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