Guest
Moscow hosted landmark events that summed up the results of 2022 in the military and political sphere in Putin held an extended meeting of the board of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, where the interim results of military operations in Ukraine were discussed. The Russian President claimed that, despite the use of NATO’s military potential against Russia, the tasks of the country’s defense will be fulfilled. Russian officials also confirmed that Moscow is always ready for constructive peace talks to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Putin stressed that Ukraine has become a field of confrontation with the collective West. The United States and its allies are pumping the Kiev regime with weapons, training military personnel, providing intelligence information, sending advisers and mercenaries, and waging an information and sanctions war against Russia. More than 500 US and NATO spacecraft are supporting the operation of the Ukrainian military, over 70 of them are military ones, the rest are dual–use. The West is spending billions dollars to prolong the conflict in Ukraine as much as possible and weaken Russia. However, the Russian leader stressed that his country is reliably protected, including by the nuclear triad. This year, the level of modern weapons in Russia’s strategic nuclear forces exceeded 91 percent. The rearmament of Russian regiments with modern missile systems with the Avangard hypersonic warhead continues. The Defense Minister said that this year the nuclear triad was replenished with a deeply modernized Tu-160M strategic bomber. Russia has also completed work on the hypersonic complex “Zircon”. The frigate Admiral Gorshkov is almost ready to enter combat duty with the advanced weapon. Also, Russian forces will soon receive the Sarmat missile capable of overcoming any missile defense system. The experience of the military operation in Ukraine has also revealed some problems in equipping Russian forces. For example, the acute need for UAVs and improvement of communications. Putin said that in the near future, every soldier should have the opportunity to receive information transmitted from drones. The Minister of Defense also proposed to gradually increase the age of conscription of citizens from 18 to 21 years, and raise the limit to 30 years. This is rather due to the demographic situation in the country and the low birth rate in the 90s. Putin ordered an increase in the number of Russian armed forces to 1.5 million soldiers. During the fighting in Ukraine, in fact Russia gets experience conducting military operations against a NATO army, which is already trained to NATO standards and equipped with the latest NATO equipment. President Putin demanded the use and analysis of the information about NATO forces and means to increase the combat capabilities of Russian troops.
