VLADIKAVKAZ, November 21 (Itar-Tass) —— The Russian state authorities will continue to make unprecedented major allocations for new military hardware purchases, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged to servicemen on Monday. Meanwhile, he noted that single models of foreign weapons can be purchased.
“We can buy foreign military hardware, but in quite limited volumes, sooner single models, so that it will be clear how foreign armies are equipped and our producers do not dream and produce the best weapons,” the president said at a meeting with servicemen in the headquarters of the 58th Army.
“I do not doubt that we will continue to arm the army, we make major unprecedented high expenditures for the purpose envisaged in the budget and the state defence order,” Medvedev said.
The notion “new armed forces” includes three components – new organizational system, new weapons, new service conditions, including the remuneration and housing, the president noted. “If we resolve these three tasks, we will obtain new armed forces,” Medvedev said with confidence.
The president did not agree with the opinion of criticizing experts, which believe that the army is being modernized too slowly. “I believe that for the last few years we could make a major progress,” the president stated.
The president noted that the equipping of the army with new military hardware should have been settled immediately, because “with the outdated military hardware, which the armed forces were equipped with, it was hard to set them going, even drive them, notwithstanding their combat capacity.”
The president noted that the state allocations for new military hardware will be spent for the purpose, “Starting from the needs of motorized units and ending with nuclear weapons.”