The latest edition of Russia’s National Security Strategy “defines the preservation of the people of Russia as its topmost priority,” Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev told TASS in an interview yesterday. He made clear that that Strategy report, of course, covers the military and security policies required “to defend Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” even as Russia seeks “to increase predictability, trust and security in the international sphere.” At the same time, he emphasized, the Strategy addresses the necessity of ensuring national economic security and improving the lives of the Russian people, if national security is to be defended.
“Only a harmonic combination of a powerful state and the welfare of man will ensure the prosperity of Russia and the establishment of a just society,” Patrushev told TASS.
He elaborated:
“The Strategy defines tasks, aimed at the increase of Russia’s competitiveness and resistance to external and internal threats, and at the establishment of conditions for economic growth at a rate that surpasses the global one… An important condition for ensuring economic security is the reliance on Russia’s internal potential, independent solving of present tasks, with preservation of openness for mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries.”
