Russia has the upper hand in weapons production over the West and intends to keep the rate of growth high, a top Russian minister said yesterday after the West and Russia ramped up arms production for the Ukraine war.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year, triggering the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II, and the deepest confrontation between Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Ukraine and its Western backers ramped up arms production in an attempt to defeat Russian forces on the battlefields of Ukraine. Russia also hiked production, but says the West is to blame for the war which Moscow dates to 2014.
Photo: Russian Ministry of Defense Press Service via AP
“I don’t want to boast, but I can say that we began to gain and picked up the pace of production earlier than Western countries,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, who oversees arms production, told the Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti.
“Another question is how long this race will last,” Manturov said, adding that a 2025-2034 armament plan was due to be approved next year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu have said that production of artillery, drones, tanks and armored vehicles is soaring.
Some former leaders of the West have spoken about a new Cold War between Russia and China on one side and the US and its allies on the other, although Russia’s US$2 trillion economy would find it hard to counter the entire might of the West alone for long.
The US’ nominal GDP was US$27 trillion this year, while China’s was US$17.7 trillion, IMF data showed.
“We must both replenish reserves and maintain the given rate of production,” Manturov said. “As far as it comes to the guts of Western countries — here I would not want to speak for them.”
The volume of state defense orders this year has doubled over the previous year, with production of “certain weapons” rising 10-fold, he said.
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