Moscow shows its military mettle in run-up to Victory Day parade

Russia paraded some of its most modern military gear, including the world's most advanced tank, through the streets of Moscow on Monday in a rehearsal for a massive parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory in the second world war on Saturday.

The decision by president Vladimir Putin to stage a display of cutting-edge weapons sends a powerful message about Moscow's determination to project its power in its neighbourhood and globally.

During the hour-long rehearsal on Red Square on Monday night, the Armata T-14 was fully shown in public for the first time. Russian defence analysts say that with its remotely-controlled turret and an automatic loading system for its gun, the tank is superior to all existing tanks.

It represents the ambitions behind a massive rearmament programme under which the military is to replace 70 per cent of its weapons with modern gear by 2020.

Mr Putin's government has shown twice over the past decade - in the 2008 Georgia war and the current war in Ukraine - that it is willing to use military force to assert its influence in its immediate neighbourhood.

Apart from the Armata, the parade also features several new armoured personnel carriers as well as the Yars, Russia's new intercontinental ballistic missile, and the S-400, the country's most advanced air defence missile.

On Monday night, many local residents lined up along the capital's streets had their attention focused on the massive trucks carrying the nuclear missiles. "This will be on CNN, and they will remember in America that we are a nuclear power after all," said Andrei, a Muscovite who was filming the vehicles with his smartphone as they rolled towards Red Square.

But military experts said the most striking message of the parade was the large amount of new equipment entering the ground forces. "The ground forces are the part of the military that are starting to really feel the difference from the modernisation programme," said a foreign defence official in Moscow who watched the rehearsal.

The 10-year rolling rearmament plan, which kicked off in 2011, envisions spending of more than Rbs2,000bn ($38.4bn) for the modernisation through to 2020. A new version, running from 2016 through to 2025, is due to be finalised by the end of the year. Moscow has run such 10-year armaments plans for a long time, but in the past always struggled to meet their targets.

In the course of the past four years, the military came close to fulfilling the plan for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union as Mr Putin's government used budget funds accumulated during years of high oil prices for hefty defence spending hikes.

However, the spending spree is hitting a stumbling block as plummeting oil prices and soaring inflation are forcing budget cuts.

In the revised budget passed by the Duma last month, defence spending was reduced 4.8 per cent compared with the original budget approved late last year - a cut far above the 1.9 per cent reduction across all categories of budget spending.

"This was achieved partly by reducing spending under the state armaments programme possible, I suspect, because some projects have been delayed," said Julian Cooper, an expert on Russian military spending at the University of Birmingham.

The government is also considering delaying the next 10-year rolling rearmaments plan. Dmitry Rogozin, deputy prime minister in charge of the military-industrial complex, initially called for an increase of funding from the Rbs2,000bn under the current 10-year plan to more than Rbs5,500bn. But officials in the Ministry of Finance and the Economy Ministry argue that even keeping funding at the levels budgeted under the current plan will be difficult given the economic recession.

"The Russian economy just does not generate enough resources to finance the current rearmament programme," said the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Russian defence think-tank, in a recent report. It argued that this seriously hampered efforts to renew the military's equipment.

The Armata will be a test case. The tank is expected to enter service next year as scheduled. But fully equipping the army with the new vehicle would require delivery of 2,300 of the new tanks in the next five years. "Even if it rolls across Red Square this weekend for everyone to see, that is not very realistic," said the foreign defence official.

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