MOSCOW. May 4 (Interfax-AVN) - A further reduction of the Russian Armed Forces might pose a threat to national security, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.
"In the last 15 years, the Russian armed forces reduced almost three times from 3,300,000 people to 1,200,000 people. But reducing them even further would mean a threat to the national security of our territories," Ivanov said in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta to be published on Wednesday.
"In the military respect, we will remain strong not based on the numbers of soldiers, this is obvious, but due to modern weapons," he said.
"We might have less combat blocs than the United States, but even Americans themselves do not pay attention to this criterion," he said. "It is the quality that matters as well as the guaranteed ability of that weapon to justify itself. We live in the real world and we are not going to give up the development and improvement of our nuclear forces. It is the same in the United States. In this matter, we are on the same level," he said.