MOSCOW, September 10. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia will not enter into a new arms race, President Vladimir Putin said.

“Somebody would like to start the flywheel of the arms race turning again,” Putin said at a conference devoted to defence-industrial complex affairs on Wednesday. “We shall not enter into that arms race, of course.”

Putin added that a different turn of events was absolutely ruled out.

“We shall proceed from real development forecasts,” he concluded.

Vladimir Putin instructed the government to submit balanced funding proposals for the new arms programme by the end of October.

He said the proposals would have to take into account military development tasks and at the same time be realistic and based on the country’s financial and economic possibilities.

Putin said he was expecting proposals on how to make budget spending more effective and identify priorities more clearly.

The macroeconomic forecast should be used as a basis when defining the scope of financing for Russia’s state arms program, the president said Wednesday at a meeting on development of the program for 2015-2016.

Putin said the Economic Development Ministry has prepared two variants of the forecast — a basic one and an optimization one.

Putin heads Military-Industrial Commission

Vladimir Putin has become the head of the Military-Industrial Commission that earlier worked under the government.

“The decree to form the Military-Industrial Commission of the Russian Federation has been signed. In this way, the status of this structure is raised,” Putin said at a meeting on military-industrial sector development.

He said the new status will allow the commission to better coordinate state defense order implementation issues.

Putin said the commission will work under his direct supervision, with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to be its deputy head and Deputy Defense Minister Yury Borisov to be its executive secretary.

“I hope the new status of the commission and its broad powers will make it possible to more distinctly coordinate interaction between the Defense Ministry, other institutions and enterprises of the defense industry sector and promptly solve all issues to organize implementation of the state defense order,” the head of state said.

He said the changes will “raise the effectiveness of the state policy in the sphere of the defense industry sector and military-technical defense and security support”.