Putin vows to rebuild military strength

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected one of Russia’s new prototype stealth fighter jets yesterday and said the country needs a stronger military to protect it against foreign attempts to stoke conflict around its borders.

Less than two weeks before a presidential election in which he hopes for a resounding win, Mr Putin visited Komsomolsk-on-Amur, a snow-swept city in Russia’s Far East where planemaker Sukhoi is a big employer.

He prefaced his trip with a newspaper article intended to burnish his image as a strong leader, saying Russia would spend 23 trillion roubles (about £484 billion) over a decade to modernise the former Cold War superpower’s armed forces.

“New regional and local wars are being sparked before our very eyes,” Mr Putin wrote in the article published on the front page of Russia’s official gazette, Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

“There are attempts to provoke such conflicts in the immediate vicinity of the borders of Russia and our allies,” he wrote ahead of the 4 March election, which he is expected to win.

Russia’s armed forces saw a decade of spending cuts after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, although Mr Putin tried during his 2000-8 presidency to slow the decline. The military now has about one million personnel.

Mr Putin examined a Sukhoi Su-30 fighter and a T-50 jet, which Russia has designed to rival the US F-22 stealth fighter, though its introduction is several years away.

“With him it is getting better and better. It is not getting worse. I am afraid that if someone else comes to power, only God knows what may happen,” said Sergei, a Sukhoi worker.

But with other plants in the city of 260,000 struggling, not everyone was so enthusiastic.

“I am not going to vote for any of these power usurpers,” said Andrei, 28, a technician, referring to all five presidential candidates including Mr Putin.