Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

facilitate the elimination of weapon systems that were
either too old, or too costly to maintain for purposes
of “sufficient” deterrence while concentrating on the
development and production of modern and more effective
systems. They also sought to promote bilateral
and multilateral cooperation with the West in areas
where Moscow lacked resources and/or advanced
technologies, e.g. Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD).
A key Russian diplomatic initiative, intended as
an alternative to the U.S. global BMD system, was the
offer to create a “European ABM system.” The Euro-
ABM was supposed to be built with the help of Russian
tactical ABM technologies that could allegedly
protect the European continent, including the European
part of the RF, against non-strategic ballistic missiles
71 Moreover, the Russian government proposed to
participate in developing “strategic” ABM systems
in cooperation with the United States on the basis of
“equality of rights” and under an “appropriate legal
framework.” 72
THE MEDVEDEV-PUTIN DUUMVIRATE
The elevation of Dmitrii Medvedev to the pinnacle
of the Russian political hierarchy did not and apparently
could not make any major changes to the Russian
nuclear strategy, especially the reliance on nuclear
weapons. Medvedev was hand-picked by Vladimir
Putin as his successor. Both share power in a duumvirate
arrangement. Disagreements between the two are
limited to secondary matters.
As a symbolic gesture addressed to the Russian
people and the rest of the world, on May 15, 2008,
hardly a week after his formal inauguration as the RF
President (May 7, 2008), Dmitrii Medvedev visited the
field positions of the 54th missile division of the Stra-
123