The now global network of Huffington Post websites has begun publishing Russian strongman Vladimir Putin at its British franchise Huffington Post United Kingdom. Putin’s first submission to the site was titled "Russia: The Ethnicity Issue" and was published in January of this year. His second submission, published tonight, is titled "Being Strong: National Security Guarantees for the Russian People."
In the post, Putin writes, "We will, under no circumstances, surrender our strategic deterrent capability. Indeed, we will strengthen it."
The Huffington sites have in the past been critical of efforts to strengthen the U.S. nuclear deterrent, and were generally supportive of the New START treaty President Obama pursued with Russia imposing new limits on U.S. strategic forces.
Putin proposes developing a Russian missile defense system to counter U.S. efforts to deploy components of a limited missile defense system against the threat from Iran, and he threatens to develop a "response to the U.S. global antimissile shield and its European section [that] will be effective and asymmetrical."
Dismissing concerns that renewed military spending will bankrupt the Russian Federation, Putin insists any such criticism is "profoundly delusionary."
Putin’s post does not address his government’s veto of a recent U.S.-led effort at the United Nations to condemn the crackdown on Syrian protesters by that country’s Moscow-backed regime. Nor does Putin address recent protests in Russia that were sparked by claims of fraud in recent parliamentary elections and which have persisted in the run up to a spring presidential election that will almost certainly see Putin’s return to the Russian presidency.