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At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum , Vladimir Putin on Canada-Russia Relations
19 June 2016
At the 20th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum President Vladimir Putin spoke with heads of International News Agencies on June 17, 2016. The meeting was attended by representatives of news agencies from France, Spain, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, China, Japan, India and Italy. On the video, the question from Canadian Press President Malcolm Kirk starts approximately at 35min.45sec. Sergei Mikhailov: Let us now go back to the American continent. Malcolm Kirk has been representing Canadian Press, Canada’s national news agency, for three years at our meetings. On September 1, the agency will celebrate its 100th anniversary, and I hope that being a huge fan of hockey Mr Kirk will use this centenary as an opportunity to play hockey, and maybe you would even invite him to play in the Night Hockey League. Vladimir Putin: With pleasure, but only if he plays on my team, since Canadians are so good at ice hockey. Malcolm Kirk: Thank you. We look forward to welcoming Russia and other countries to Toronto and to Canada later this summer for the World Cup of Hockey so it should be a great event. I’ve seen a few of your hockey moves. You know how to score a few goals, Mr President. So your stats are pretty good. Thank you again for inviting us to this meeting with you. It is a privilege and we certainly appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with you. I am going to ask you: there are some reports that Canada is under pressure from the United States to join Britain, Germany and the US in the NATO initiative that would see four troop battalions stationed in Poland and other Baltic states. These countries may feel this is perhaps an act of deterrence in the event that Russia was to perhaps invade their territory. How would you view Canada’s participation in NATO plans should the Canadian government make the decision to do so? And I guess generally how would you characterise Russia’s relations with Canada now that we have a new government? Thank you. Vladimir Putin: Let me start with the last part of your question. Since the new Prime Minister took office in Canada, there has been a chance that relations between Russia and Canada could improve. This is what the Prime Minister told me in person at the G20 Summit in Antalya. He said he wanted to think of ways to fully restore our relations. We welcome initiatives of this kind and are ready to combine our efforts in delivering on this objective. We will work together, but there are specific steps that should be taken by both sides before we get there. As for the missile defence system, look, people in this audience are all adults and are very experienced. I am not asking you to mirror everything I am about to say word for word in your coverage or to influence press coverage. I just want to tell you something in person, and remind you of some things. After all, the world is free of large-scale wars or military conflict, and we all know that. This is due to the so-called strategic balance that emerged when two nuclear super powers agreed to limit their offensive and missile-defence arsenals. Everyone understands that if one side is more successful in developing its missile defence than the other, it gains an edge and has the temptation to be the first to use these weapons. It is for this reason that missile defence and agreements in this regard are one of the cornerstones of international security. It is not at all my intention to berate or accuse anyone of anything, but when our US partners unilaterally withdrew [from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty], this was a major blow. In fact, this was the first blow to international stability in terms of upsetting the strategic balance of power. I said back then, “We are currently unable to develop this technology due to the high costs, and secondly, it has yet to be seen how it will work. Instead of simply siphoning off money, we will go the other way by improving Russia’s offensive weapons in order to maintain the balance. This was the only purpose, and it had nothing to do with threatening anyone.” Here is what we heard in response: “It is true that our missile defence system is not intended to oppose Russia, and we assume that what you do is not against us, so you may do as you please.” I can explain this by saying, as I did at the plenary session today, that it was the early 2000s when Russia was in a very complicated situation, with a ruined economy, an actual civil war and the fight against terrorism in the Caucasus, the defence industry collapsing and the Armed Forces dramatically weakened. Who could imagine then that Russia would build up its strategic weapons? They probably thought that the weapons Russia inherited from the Soviet Union would eventually become degraded. And so they told us to go ahead and do what we wanted. However, we informed them about our plans, which we are implementing. Trust me: Russia has moved a long way on this path. I will not read out the entire list, but I can tell you that we have modernised our weapons and are creating new-generation systems, not to mention the weapons that are designed to penetrate ballistic missile defence systems. Despite all our objections and offers of real cooperation, our partners do not want to cooperate with us; they have rejected all of our proposals and are working to their own plans. I believe it inappropriate to say certain things in public, but I can assure you, and you can choose to believe me or not, that we offered practical cooperation alternatives that were rejected. Eventually, they built a BMD system in Romania. They kept saying that they were doing this to protect themselves against an Iranian nuclear threat. But where is this threat now? It does not exist. We have signed a treaty with Iran, and it was the United States that initiated it. We did our best, helping as much as we could, but the treaty was only made possible through the position of the US. This success should be credited to President Obama. I believe it is a good treaty, which has eased tensions around Iran, and President Obama should definitely give himself the credit for this. Anyway, there is no Iranian threat, but the BMD system is being built nevertheless. This might mean that we were right when we suspected our partners of being insincere, of deceiving us with references to an alleged Iranian nuclear threat. Yes, this is how it was; they attempted to cheat us again. They have built this system and are now delivering missiles there. You probably know that the launch systems of the Tomahawk sea-launched intermediate-range missiles will be used to launch anti-missiles with an effective range of 500 kilometres. However, technology does not stand still, and we know more or less precisely when the Americans will create a new missile that will have a range of 1,000 kilometres or more. From that time on, they will be a threat to our nuclear arsenals. We know what will happen and in which year, and they know we know it. They are just throwing dust in our eyes, as the saying goes, and you in turn are throwing dust in the eyes of your people. What bothers me is that people are not aware of the danger. We fail to understand that we are dragging the world into a completely new dimension. This is what this is all about. They are pretending as if nothing is going on. I do not even know how to put my message across. All right, even if we put aside the interceptor missiles that will be developed in the future, increasingly threatening Russia, but the launch tubes where these missiles are stored, as I said, are the same that are used on navy ships to carry Tomahawk missiles. You can replace interceptor missiles with Tomahawks in a matter of hours and these tubes will no longer be used to intercept missiles. How do we know what is inside them? All they need is to change the software. This can be done seamlessly; even the Romanians would not know what is going on, since they cannot access these facilities, right? No one will know, neither the Romanians, nor the Poles. I know how this is done. In my opinion, this is a major threat. When we discussed this with our US partners, they had the idea of creating nonnuclear ballistic missiles. We said, “Listen, do you understand what this would be? Imagine that you fire a submarine-launch or land-based missile. A ballistic missile is launched. How do we know whether it is carrying a nuclear warhead or not? Do you understand the kind of threat this would create?” As far as we know, this programme is currently suspended. They have stopped it for now. However, they are still working on it. I do not know where this will take us. However, Russia will definitely have to retaliate. I know already that we will be accused of acting aggressively, even though all we do is respond. It is clear that we will have to ensure security, and not just in Russia, since ensuring the strategic balance of power globally is a matter of great importance for us. I would like to conclude my answer with what I started with: it is the strategic balance that ensured and guaranteed peace on the planet, sparing us from major military conflict over the last 70 years. This should be viewed as good, even though it is based on mutual threat. However, this mutual threat brought about global peace for decades. I do not know how anyone could want to destroy it. I believe that this would be very dangerous. Not only do I believe it, I am certain of it. Sergei Mikhailov: Thank you, Mr President. |