Medvedev: Navy is indispensable in national security

10.06.2010 Russia has been and must remain the leading sea power, said Russian president Dmitry Medvedev at Wednesday's Security Council session on shipbuilding development.

Opening the session, he underlined that the issue of shipbuilding development was of the utmost importance so it had been brought up for discussion at Security Council. "Russia has been and, hopefully, always will be the leading sea power. Availability of advanced sea-going Navy is a primary evolution factor of our country; the Navy is indispensable both in military security and in issues of energy and food security", said the president.

"Through many decades and especially in 20th century our country had a quite strong scientific and production capabilities to develop shipbuilding industry, including unique technologies in the area of nuclear-powered and submarine fleet", he said.

Unfortunately, in 90's the shipbuilding branch was in crisis condition, added Medvedev.

"Nowadays, we make serious efforts to relieve it from the crisis. It has become more profitable to build civil vessels abroad. Eventually, multi-million contracts fell to foreign shipyards while Russian ones stayed idle and had to mothball the production. That process led to losses of money and skilled specialists; shipbuilding industry was abandoned", pointed out the president.

He also added that demands of internal market and enlargement of export need active technological upgrade of shipbuilding industry. "What we need is a distinct long-run policy aimed at priority tasks", underlined the head of the state.