Putin and Belousov warn NATO: Russia is preparing for war

Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Andrei Belousov delivered their end-of-year report to a giant defense ministry conference on Monday, hailing the state of affairs at the front and in the rear. They talked about the latest successes in the Ukraine invasion, the increase in military spending and Russia’s preparations for conflict with NATO.

• 2024 was “a landmark year for achieving the goals” of the war in Ukraine, Putin stated, saying the Russian army had captured 189 settlements since January. According to Belousov, Ukrainian forces retain control of under 1% of the territory of the self-styled Luhansk People’s Republic, and 25-30% of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Regions — all parts of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed.
• According to Putin, the breakthrough on the front came thanks to people voluntarily signing up to fight. Some 430,000 soldiers have been recruited so far this year, compared with 300,000 in 2023. Amid massive bonuses and salaries, more than 1,000 people are signing up to join the army every day.
• Spending on national defense “right now” amounts to 6.3% of GDP and 32.5% of the federal budget, Belousov announced. As a result of this, the defense ministry will need to “bring order” to the defense ministry’s vast property network in 2025 “We also cannot increase these expenses indefinitely,” Putin admitted, noting that Russians are already “giving all they can.” 
• Putin announced that the hypersonic Oreshnik intermediate-range missile system would go into serial production in the near future, despite having said at a meeting with Russia’s allies on Nov. 28 that it was already in full swing. And in the third quarter of 2025, Russia should have its own new specialized drone unit, mirroring a decision made by Ukraine back at the start of the year. 
• Both Putin and Belousov also spoke of the prospect of direct conflict with the West. Putin complained that Russia was “being pushed to our red lines” while Belousov said that preparations for a conflict with NATO “in the next decade” were part of the defense ministry’s tasks and blamed NATO statements at its recent July summit for the increased threat. At the summit the military alliance’s final declarationdescribed Russia as “the most significant and direct threat” to its members, which requires the strengthening and modernizing of its nuclear potential.

Why the world should care

Moscow acknowledged that generous payments to contract soldiers have helped deliver an accelerating offensive on the front. Army sign-up bonuses have increased fivefold in the past year to top one million rubles on average. But it also appears that every last drop has been squeezed from the war budget. The next priority will be modernizing weapons and utilizing manpower. 

Talk of preparation for conflict with NATO can be seen as an alarming signal. It’s the first time this possibility has been discussed at such a high level in public. Previously, only the West had raised the prospect of a direct clash: former NATO general secretary Jens Stoltenberg warned that if Ukraine was defeated, its neighbors could be the next targets, while Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called for preparations for a war with Russia in the next three-to-five years. The Kremlin previously dismissed these remarks as “scare tactics” but today Belousov himself spoke in the same terms.