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Russian armed forces to have over 80% new weaponry by 2020

Defense Ministry has finalized all provisions of the state armament program up to 2020

MOSCOW, September 30 (Itar-Tass) - The Russian Armed Forces will have been armed with more than 80 percent of new weaponry by 2020, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting in the Kremlin on Monday before the draft budget for next three years is submitted in the parliament.

In his words, the Defense Ministry has finalized all provisions of the state armament program up to 2020, meanwhile, all parameters were kept in terms of quantity and deadlines.

The whole armament program was fully synchronized with the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. “So, we know today what should be done with the infrastructure over the deadlines of the delivery of weapons and military hardware; how many facilities we should build to maintain this military hardware and how many people we should educate; how many medical institutions and service housing we should build,” Shoigu said.

“Thanks to synchronization we have drafted a well-balanced budget for next three years, naturally including 2014. Meanwhile, we certainly took into account all those plans, which we had developed on your instruction to fulfill your decrees issued on May 7, 2012, and we had discussed these plans at the military’s collegiums meeting. After that we and the Finance Ministry have considered them quite thoroughly,” Shoigu told Putin.

“On all trends proper decisions were taken that allow us to advance quite dynamically to the fulfillment of those target indicators that we set. This is more than 30 percent of new weapons by 2017 and 80 percent of them by 2020,” the minister stated.

“We are convinced that we will be able to attain these target indicators in the work that we are doing today,” Shoigu assured the president.