Putin Flexes His Military Muscles

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, announced ambitious plans today to revive Russia's military power and restore its role as the world's leading producer of military aircraft.

Speaking at the opening of the biggest air show in Russia's post-Soviet history, Mr Putin said he was determined to make aircraft manufacture a national priority after decades in which the country has lagged behind the west.

"Russia has a very important goal which is to retain leadership in the production of military equipment," he said. "As a state that has acquired new economic capabilities, will continue to attach special importance to high technology and development."

Mr Putin's remarks follow his decision last week to resume long-range missions by strategic bombers capable of hitting targets in the US with nuclear weapons. Patrols over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans began last Friday for the first time since 1992.

A presidential aide hinted today that Russia could soon resume the production of Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic nuclear bombers, now the aircraft are again flying "combat missions". The bombers would be used as a "means of strategic deterrence", Alexander Burutin told Interfax.

Mr Putin said Russia would also resume the large-scale manufacture of civilian aircraft.

The new emphasis on Russia's revived military prowess comes against a backdrop of deteriorating relations with the west. Mr Putin has denounced US missile defence plans in Europe, scrapped an agreement with Nato on conventional armed forces and laid claim to a large, if symbolic, chunk of the Arctic.

A senior Russian general bluntly warned the Czech Republic today that it would be making a "big mistake" if it pressed ahead with plans to allow the Bush administration to site elements of its missile interceptor system on Czech territory. The Pentagon says the shield is necessary to defend against rogue missiles from North Korea and Iran.

Yuri Baluyevsky, Russia's military chief of staff, said that Prague should hold off any final decision on the shield until after next year's US presidential elections.

"I do not exclude that a new administration in the United States will re-evaluate the current administration's decisions on missile defence," he said, after a meeting in Moscow with the Czech defence minister, Martin Bartak.

Analysts took issue with Mr Putin's claim that Russia was already the world's leading producer of military aircraft but said the country had developed some impressive new "technologies", especially in the field of ballistic and nuclear cruise missiles. These include a new S-400 missile and aircraft interceptor system, similar but better than the US Patriot, and a lethal new supersonic cruise missile, the Meteorit-A. "They have some very good kit," one industry observer said.

Another analyst said that Mr Putin did not want confrontation with the west, but was determined to restore Russia's strategic parity with the United States after a period of weakness and humiliation in the 1990s.

"Russia wants balance. It wants a strategic balance with the US," Ivan Safranchuk, a Moscow-based defence analyst told the Guardian.

"Russia wants to do this as cheaply as possible. But with the Bush administration withdrawing from arms control treaties, Russia is saying it is also ready to keep the balance at a high level of cost," he said.

Asked about Russia's resumption of long-range bomber patrols, he said: "It's significant. For 15 years the political leadership was constraining the military on this. Now it isn't."

In the 1960s and 1970s the Soviet Union produced more civilian planes than any other country in the world apart from America. After the collapse of communism, Russia's impoverished government drastically cut spending on its aircraft industry. Factories producing military planes fared better than those building civilian aircraft, mainly because of buoyant sales to India and China.

But Russia started to fall behind the west in the design of advanced fighters and other military aircraft.

Mr Putin is now also determined to make Russia the world's third largest manufacturer of passenger jets - after the United States, with Boeing, and the European Union, with Airbus.

Russia's passenger airlines own about 2,500 aging aircraft - of which just 100 are western made models. Last week officials said they planned to build 4,500 civilian aircraft by 2025, while the Kremlin has pledged $250bn to boost the civilian industry.

A new state-controlled organisation, the United Aircraft Corporation, has been created to oversee Russia's resurgent aircraft manufacturing industry. Its boss is Sergei Ivanov - Russia's hawkish first deputy prime minister, who sat next to Mr Putin during today's air show, and who is a leading candidate to succeed him after next year's presidential elections.