(RIA Novosti) - President Vladimir Putin Tuesday ordered the government to clarify a list of Russian military technologies and to make new provisions in the state budget for military purposes.
Putin asked the government to specify a list of the basic and critical military technologies, and create a new budget-spending item for modernization of the country's Armed Forces, reports Trend.
"Processes of technological rearmament in the Army and Navy are gaining momentum weakly, and we are falling behind in providing the Army and Navy with modern systems of armament," Putin said at a session of Russia's Security Council.
"We must determine the order of budgetary expenditures in the interests of effective distribution of budget resources, dividing the priorities between the development and maintenance of the Armed Forces," he said.
The president said a year had passed since the Security Council defined guidelines for the country's military development to 2015, and that a number of goals had been achieved.
At a Security Council session last June, Putin said, "Our direct duty is to do everything possible to ensure that Russia's Armed Forces correspond to contemporary requirements."
He said that "there is an obvious tendency [in efforts] to overcome the crisis that the Russian Armed Forces had been in for a long time," and urged for more active steps in technological rearmament of the Army and Navy.