Russia's military should receive equipment upgrades worth a massive 800 billion dollars over the next eight years, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in a Monday newspaper article outlining key aspects of his election campaign, dpa reported.
Russia's armed forces should secure 400 new intercontinental ballistic missiles, 600 combat aircraft, 2,300 tanks and 20 submarines as part of a wide-reaching modernisation programme to be complete by 2020, Putin said, according portions of his campaign platform published in Rossiskaya Gazeta newspaper.
The land component of Russia's armed forces should be organised in 100 combat brigades, each capable of deploying "anywhere in 24 hours," Putin said.
Russia's military must modernise and re-arm to prevent a repetition of a 1941 surprise attack by Nazi Germany on an unprepared Soviet Union, which caused disastrous losses, he said.
"Our security can be guaranteed only if the country is really strong," Putin said. "We need a strong army."
Russia spent 58.7 billion dollars on its military in 2010, or roughly 4 per cent of its gross domestic product, according an estimate by the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute.
Putin is the heavy favourite in the March 4 presidential election. The newspaper article giving Putin's views on the country's armed forces was the sixth in a series of policy papers he has published in the run-up to the vote.
The former KGB spy has also made public campaign planks on accelerating Russian economic development and improving social benefits for low-income citizens.
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