What a bunch of paranoid simpletons.
read epicenter...
Putin hasn't help cure that tendency in the Russians.
Makes one pine for a good 'ol drunk like Yeltsin.
Very little has changed.
So I don't get why the statement is news. I've always assumed every nuclear armed nation felt this way or they wouldn't risk building and maintaining such terrible instruments of mass slaughter and destruction. I as a US citizen expect whoever our president is to be ready to nuke a nation if they are legitimately a threat to us. The Russians are merely stating that they have "second amendment rights of the highest order". Those of us in the US have no ground to stand on criticizing their statement, being as how we are the only nation who has ever nuked anybody and that was a nation already half defeated. Now don't get me wrong I'm proud we nuked the emperor worshiping Japanese fiends, and feel it was too bad we couldn't have given the Germans a little taste too. But it is the height of hypocrisy for us to disparage other nations when they state their right to preemptive defense.