On July 22, 2014 President Vladimir Putin chaired a Security Council meeting in the Kremlin.
The discussion focused mainly on the maintenance of Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. But Putin did comment on the treat posed to Russia by the United States and NATO military buildup of offensive weapons near its border regions.
Putin’s comments are as follows:
“Our Armed Forces remain the most important guarantor of our sovereignty and Russia’s territorial integrity. We will react appropriately and proportionately to the approach of NATO’s military infrastructure toward our borders, and we will not fail to notice the expansion of global missile defense systems and increases in the reserves of strategic non-nuclear precision weaponry.
We are often told that the ABM system is a defense system. But that’s not the case. This is an offensive system; it is part of the offensive defense system of the United States on the periphery. Regardless of what our foreign colleagues say, we can clearly see what is actually happening: groups of NATO troops are clearly being reinforced in Eastern European states, including in the Black and Baltic seas. And the scale and intensity of operational and combat training is growing. In this regard, it is imperative to implement all planned measures to strength our nation’s defense capacity fully and on schedule, including, of course, in Crimea and Sevastopol, where essentially we need to fully recreate the military infrastructure.”
Source: Kremlin.ru