"Unpredictability factors" will affect military and political planning

"In the future, unpredictability factors will increasingly affect political and military planning of a greater number of nations, including Russia and Canada," said Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov who is now on an official visit to Canada.

On Monday, October 6, Ivanov inspected the former command bunker of the Canadian government near Ottawa.

After visiting "the museum of the Cold War," which was founded by the Canadian government in 1994, the minister shared his impressions with Russian reporters who accompanied him.

"This is interesting from the historical point of view and also as regards understanding that period of paranoia that twenty-thirty years ago swept the North American continent and, honestly, the territory of the former Soviet Union too," said the minister.

At that time, it was necessary to develop the system of civil defence, but now, what I have seen in the bunker made me only smile, said Ivanov.

"It was especially funny to hear the radio taped training alert of that time which said: 'As was expected, the Soviet Union has attacked us.'" At the same time, Ivanov pointed out, "the period of the Cold War was a paradise both for those who were planning military operations and for military analysts." Today, in the opinion of the minister, "we are living in a different time, facing other threats, above all terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." "At the present time it has become much more difficult to plan anything, and for this reason the Russian Defence Ministry has introduced a new term - "a factor of unpredictability," said Sergei Ivanov.