Vladimir Putin gave his annual state of the nation address on Thursday. It began with promises of a bright future, in which life expectancy has risen, poverty levels are halved and GDP grows by 50% by 2025. Two-thirds of the way through, though, Putin turned it into a belligerent ode to Russian military technology and a challenge to the US. Putin was not so much seeking to start a new arms race abroad, as trying to keep alive an old myth at home about a Russia whose firepower was its only source of international traction and security.
As he stood in front of video screens showing clunky simulations of one missile after another, Putin looked like a salesman of Armageddon. There was the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, with its 15 nuclear warheads and its hypersonic cousin, the Avangard. The Status-6 drone torpedo that could carry a nuclear payload of its own.
Source : theguardian
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