Official says arms parity is needed

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei B. Ivanov, a possible successor to President Vladimir V. Putin, said Russia must achieve nuclear arms parity with the U.S.

“Military potential, to say nothing of nuclear potential, must be at the proper level if we want . . . to just stay independent,” Itar-Tass news agency quoted Ivanov as saying.

“The weak are not loved and not heard, they are insulted, and when we have parity they will talk to us in a different way.”

Ivanov was speaking to veterans and members of Russia’s military-industrial commission, which he heads. He earlier emphasized that Moscow was seeking “a qualitative rather than a numerical parity.”