President Vladimir Putin: The first thing that comes to mind and that we just mentioned is the following. While we were on our way here, one of your colleagues said: “All the work we do is for export”. And to make sure the number of potential importers of your production does not increase, and that no one will want to join this queue, Russia should and will remain a great nuclear power.
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The general impression from the visit to the centre is excellent and positive. Both from the viewpoint of its maintenance, and from the viewpoint of the system for insuring security of the object, and of the actual state of the nuclear weapons complex.
The most impressive thing is the level of developments, developments of the most modern technical and scientific nature, and, what is especially important, developments in correct and very interesting modern directions.
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Russia has taken on a number of very serious restrictive obligations of international law, and has not conducted nuclear tests for many years now. On the one hand, we intend in future to develop everything that is necessary to ensure that science and the practical side of your research is appropriately provided for, but the position we take is that we fulfil and intend to continue fulfilling the obligations we have taken on according to mandatory requirements, one of the most important of which is the relation to obligations that other nuclear powers have taken on. I want to make this quite clear…