Russia's Arctic military construction bigger than other countries' - Shoigu
MOSCOW. Feb 26 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's military construction in the Arctic is the biggest when compared to other countries' similar projects in the region, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said.
"Since 2013, we have built 545 installations on over 710,000 square meters under Far North conditions. No other country in the world has carried out such massive construction on the Arctic latitudes," Shoigu said at a meeting with senior defense officials on Monday.
"The geography of construction of the Defense Ministry infrastructure is vast: from Kaliningrad to the Kuril Islands and from southern military bases to the Arctic," Shoigu said.
In all, 10,480 buildings and structures have been built for the defense ministry in the past five years, he said. "The bulk of these efforts focused on creating forces and means of nuclear deterrence, an airfield network, a naval base system, and comprehensive storage arsenals," Shoigu said.
In 2018 the ministry is planning to build over 3,600 buildings and structures, for which the government has allocated 117.6 billion rubles, he said. Of this sum, 93.9 billion rubles will be spent on building special and military facilities, in particular for storing new weapons and military equipment, he said.
"Separately I will stress that thanks to the support from the Supreme commander-in-chief, for the first time major construction work was included in the state armament program approved in December 2017," Shoigu said.
Over the past few years it has been possible to renew existing military infrastructure faster and build new one faster and cheaper, he said. "This was facilitated by the strict synchronization of measures, the introduction of new construction technologies, and by switching to uniform standards and standard projects," Shoigu said.