Russia's build-up

With all the information about Russia that Dennis has posted on this blog throughout the years, I found the Breaking News Twitter feed on my phone this morning to be a bit alarming:

“Russia will spend $650 billion to equip its dilapidated military with 600 new warplanes, 100 ships and 1,000 helicopters by 2020, Defense Ministry officials were quoted as saying Thursday.”

So, I turned on my computer and began to dig around. I found several articles about this development. Here’s one of them:

http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/02/24/6121328-russian-military-to-purchase-600-planes-100-ships

A couple of lines I found intriguing:

"Russia needs a professional noncommissioned officers core to train specialists who can really put these arms to effective use," said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst. "This spending necessitates a whole new kind of military."

This one was even more so:

“The Mistral, which could carry up to 16 helicopters and dozens of armored vehicles, would allow Russia to land hundreds of troops quickly on foreign soil.”

Russia is increasing their military spending to 1.5% of GDP, up from 0.5. I was curious, did they somehow miss the economic abyss the rest of the world seems to be dangling over? Nope.

According to the CIA website, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rs.html

"The Russian economy, however, was one of the hardest hit by the 2008-09 global economic crisis as oil prices plummeted and the foreign credits that Russian banks and firms relied on dried up. The Central Bank of Russia spent one-third of its $600 billion international reserves, the worlds third largest, in late 2008 to slow the devaluation of the ruble. The government also devoted $200 billion in a rescue plan to increase liquidity in the banking sector and aid Russian firms unable to roll over large foreign debts coming due. The economic decline bottomed out in mid-2009 and the economy began to grow in the first quarter of 2010. However, a severe drought and fires in central Russia reduced agricultural output, prompting a ban on grain exports for part of the year, and slowed growth in other sectors such as manufacturing and retail trade. Russia's long-term challenges include a shrinking workforce, a high level of corruption, difficulty in accessing capital for smaller, non-energy companies, and poor infrastructure in need of large investments."

So what’s necessitating this enormous build-up of submarines, helicopters, aircraft carriers and fighter jets when they’re struggling to feed their people? And why the sudden need to land troops on foreign soil in a rapid manner?

Could it be a build up to war?