(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Yesterday that Russia would be forced to direct its armed forces at any countries that might threaten it, potentially adding to tensions with Western powers over its military ambitions.
Tension has flared with the West over Moscow's role in the Ukraine crisis, in which pro-Russian separatist forces have seized a large part of the country's east after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
"We will be forced to aim our armed forces at those territories from where the threat comes," Putin told a joint news conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto after talks at a presidential residence outside Moscow.
Putin noted that Russia was most concerned about a long-running NATO project to build a missile defense system in Europe. Moscow has repeatedly expressed opposition to that, and earlier Putin said Russia would add more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal this year.
"It is NATO that is moving towards our border and we aren't moving anywhere," he said.
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