Russia, politics and power: internal & external(new title)

[Stan]

I ran across this Russian Defense Forum trying to figure out just who is/are considered allies

Scroll down to Russia's Allies thread.

EDIT: Baluyevsky added

...that Russia would use nuclear weapons and carry out preventive strikes only "in cases specified by the doctrinal documents of the Russian Federation."

Retired General Vladimir Dvorkin, formerly a top arms control expert with the Defense Ministry, said he saw "nothing new" in Baluyevsky's statement. "He was restating the doctrine in his own words," Dvorkin said.

Moscow-based military analyst Alexander Golts said that when Russia broke with stated Soviet-era policy in the 2000 doctrine and declared it could use nuclear weapons first against an aggressor, it reflected the decline of Russia's conventional forces in the decade following the 1991 Soviet collapse.

"Baluyevsky's statement means that, as before, we cannot count on our conventional forces to counter aggression," Golts said on Ekho Moskvy radio. "It means that, as before, the main factor in containing aggression against Russia is nuclear weapons."