The Russian statements about the actual withdrawal from the INF Treaty that sounded on February 2 clarify the logic of Putin’s strategists, their ideas about the security of the country become clear. For them security is not so much protection of the population of Russia as the ability to break through the American missile defence system and cause maximum damage to the United States and its allies. Critical threats to its population are not taken into account. Perhaps this is because the President has already promised that the Russians will go to heaven, and “they” will simply die.

“They announced that they are engaged in research, development and design work, and we will do the same thing,” Putin said on Saturday. The same thing! This is despite the fact that the annual expenditure of the United States on defence is almost ten times higher than Russia’s, labour productivity in Russia is five times less than in America, and the average salary in the Russian IT industry is seven times lower and the Russian engineer earns 3.5 – 4 times less than in America. This means that for Russia the arms race will again become an incredibly heavy, perhaps critical, economic burden, making the country’s development prospects hardly predictable.

In general, the developments mean the defeat of Putin’s foreign and defence policy. This is a defeat for which our country will have to pay dearly.

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