Medvedev: Russia Will Be 'Torn To Pieces' Unless It Develops Army, Security Arm
Moscow, 6 April: Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev had demanded that officers should fulfil the state defence order accurately and thoroughly, and carry out the reform of the Armed Forces and the Interior Ministry to a good standard.
"Everything that concerns funding for the state defence order, the Armed Forces reform, the Interior Ministry reform, the development of other force structures and law-enforcement bodies, all of this has to be done thoroughly, without making allowances for any circumstances. I shall personally keep an eye on this," Medvedev said at a meeting with officers appointed to senior posts.
(Passage omitted: Medvedev congratulated the officers)
Addressing the officers as the supreme commander-in-chief, the head of state stressed that all his decisions should be carried out rigorously.
"All the decisions approved by me as the supreme commander-in-chief, regardless of the difficult situation in which we live, regardless of the difficult conditions in which the state budget has to be formed, they should be carried out - not because that is what the supreme commander-in-chief decided but because such is the imperatives of our time. We cannot leave our country without the sufficient development of the Armed Forces and law-enforcement bodies. We shall simply be torn to pieces," the president explained.
He stressed that any state must be able to defend itself. "A state such as Russia, however, has to do it in a special way on account of the vast borders that our country has, and the quite significant number of problems within our state too. We are at a rather difficult stage of development. This is exactly why all the decisions that have been taken, all the money that has been earmarked, they should all go towards funding the development of the Armed Forces, the security services, and other law-enforcement bodies," Medvedev said.
He said he was talking about new armaments and hardware, "and so that we do not pale in comparison with our colleagues, with whom we often have to compete in all sorts of situations". "We should be prepared to defend our country, defend it both within, and at the external borders. The defence can be soft, and it can be armed, and unfortunately, contemporary history has given us examples of armed conflicts in which we have had to take part," Medvedev added.
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