Russian President Vladimir Putin broached the subject of the United States recently alleging without any proof that Russia plans to deploy some kind of nuclear weapons in space during his State of the Nation address on Thursday.
Having dismissed these unfounded allegations, Putin mentioned that Russia is yet to receive any serious proposals from the US to initiate bilateral contacts on strategic stability.
Commenting on the Russian president’s remarks, Dr. Marco Marsili, a researcher at Cà Foscari University of Venice, pointed out that the US and its European allies have consistently refused to negotiate “international legally-binding instruments” with Russia, despite the latter's initiatives aimed at preventing possible deployment of nuclear armaments in space.
According to Dr. Marsili, who is also an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic Research (Cesran International) and who holds research positions in major civil and military institutions in Portugal, the UK and Italy, the US and its allies torpedoed the initiatives “to maintain their technical advantages from its missile defense program and other space weapons.”
“In his speech delivered today, President Putin opened once again to a frank and genuine negotiation with the US on the placement of nuclear arms in outer space but, so far, has not received any signal from the counterpart,” he said.
“Today, Russia is in a stronger position due to its technological advances in missile defense and has developed hypersonic capabilities, like the Avangard rocket cited by President Putin in his speech, which place the country far away from its Western competitors. Notwithstanding, President Putin is still seeking dialogue with the White House, but does not receive any response.”
Dr. Marsili also weighed in on Putin’s statement about the need for a new global financial architecture that would be free from political interference, with Marsili noting how the “global governance” that emerged in the aftermath of World War II “was shaped by Western nations.”
“This post-colonialist governance, including the Bretton Woods system, is challenged by emerging countries from Africa and Latin America. The Sino-Russian cooperation agreement about the Belt and Road Initiative, and regional agreements with CSI member states can boost the economic growth of the region,” he continued.
Regarding Putin’s remark on Russia’s prospects to become one of the world’s four largest economies soon, Dr. Marsili observed that the figures presented by the Russian president to the audience during the speech “demonstrate the foreseen growth of the Russian economy, despite international sanctions.”
“These figures are reliable because they are based on data provided by the economic outlook of the major international institutions such as the IMF, the OECD, and the World Bank,” he added. “As of today, Russia's economy is already among the largest in the world by nominal GDP. A significant economic power, Russia is not only the largest country in the world, but also an energy superpower and one of the largest producers of rare-earth materials that are crucial for many technologic applications.”
Meanwhile, Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, argued that one of the crucial themes of Putin’s address was the matter of Russia’s sovereignty.
“Without question, sovereignty was another crucial theme of Putin's address and sovereignty could be considered as the ideology of Russian development in the observable future. The president emphasized the political, economic and technological sovereignty of Russia. Sovereignty is indeed a precondition of Russian not just development, but survival, and, of course, development,” he elaborated.
According to Suslov, “Western policies prove that the West uses and used the interdependence and Russian dependence on the Western technologies and markets as a weapon against Russia.”
Thus, in order to avoid such dependence in the future and to not exchange it for “a new dependence on the other countries,” Russia "needs to be sovereign in all crucial aspects of development - in technologies, in defense, in the main aspects of economic development and, of course, in the political sphere,” he postulated.