WARSAW: Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Thursday that a new arms race could lead to the fall of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “regime”, just like it toppled the Soviet Union.
The NATO member’s top diplomat spoke after the Western defence alliance agreed to massively ramp up defence spending, seen as vital to counter the threat from Russia.
“Putin should understand that he is on the path of (Soviet leader Leonid) Brezhnev. He himself once said that the Soviet Union collapsed because it spent too much on armament, and now he is doing exactly the same thing,“ Sikorski said in an interview with AFP, the Polish news agency PAP and German agency DPA.
“He is waging a very expensive war and also provoked, scared the whole West into reinforcing its defence spending... We are doing it because Putin is threatening us,“ he added.
“This means that from an economy the size of Texas, Putin will have to squeeze out even more defence funds. Hopefully with a similar result for the regime (to that of the Soviet Union), but faster.”
NATO’s 32 countries agreed to US President Donald Trump’s headline target of five percent of GDP on defence spending following two days of talks in The Hague.
The compromise hatched by NATO sees countries promise to dedicate 3.5 percent of GDP to core military spending by 2035, and a further 1.5 to broader security-related areas such as infrastructure.
Underpinning the leaders’ discussions on defence was Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, with the summit’s final statement referring to the “long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security”.
