Moscow. October 14th. INTERFAX - The head of the State Duma Committee on Defense, former deputy head of the Defense Ministry Andrei Kartapolov said that Moscow opposes the arms race, but is forced to increase its potential because of the position of the West.
"The arms race cannot be won. Because this is such a thing where there can be no winners by definition. And let our partners not delude themselves that they allegedly once defeated the Soviet Union. Well, they defeated the Soviet Union. And did that make the world easier? Is he calmer now? Of course not," Kartapolov said on the Rossiya 24 TV channel (VGTRK) on Thursday.
According to him, Russia and Western countries are forced to spend money on an arms race instead of fighting the pandemic and helping states that cannot provide for themselves.
"And we have to spend these funds, which could go to other issues, to ensure the security of our country. But we didn't start it. Our partners started it," Kartapolov said.
The parliamentarian added that the West's withdrawal from the anti-missile defense treaty has led to the fact that the need for it has disappeared: new weapons systems have appeared that overcome all existing missile defense systems. Later, hypersonic systems began to appear, which the Russian Federation has and Moscow's partners do not yet have.
