Your moves to strengthen your ability to defend yourselves will be met by us with greater force. So says Russian President Vladimir Putin.
If the US puts intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will take countermeasures, Putin said at his end-of-year press conference. He warned the “threshold” for the use of nuclear weapons was getting lower.
And this:
In a wide-ranging press conference, Mr Putin also blamed the US for triggering a new arms race and raising the threat of a nuclear war, slamming Washington for abandoning Cold War-era missile treaties even as he boasted of Moscow’s plans to develop new weapons.
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Russia, whose military budget is only about a 10th of that of the US….
No contradiction there. Bring it. Repeat your predecessor nation’s arms race performance.