"We have permanent squabbles even with two our military allies Armenia and Belarus," said Ruslan Pukhov, Director at the Moscow-based Center of Strategic Analysis and Technologies, at a roundtable in Moscow.
"Terrorist wars may broke out on our southern borders as soon as the United States leave Afghanistan already in 2014. The next war the Russian army may be involved in will be in Central Asia and very soon.
In such situation Russia is proudly and lonely drifting on "the waves of the global politics." And even two our military allies Armenia and Belarus permanently squabble with us and this squabble is sometimes rather hard-hitting," Pukhov said.
He is sure that Russia's major challenges are not in the military field. The biggest challenges of Russia are corruption, outdated infrastructure, degrading health care system and high and secondary schools. Consequently, Puhkov said, resources must be directed to the above fields first.