VLADIMIR PUTIN began outlining his recipe for a strong Russia yesterday by telling nuclear weapons designers their work was vital to the country and growing ever more important.

Any power's place in the world was determined by its military might and Russia had to boost its nuclear potential, the president-elect said during a visit to a top-secret closed city in the Urals.

 The choice of destination for his first trip outside Moscow since his victory in last weekend's elections, a highly sensitive centre for nuclear weapons research, was heavy with symbolism.

 The Telegraph was among a small group of foreign media invited to join the presidential party.

 Mr Putin took the opportunity to practise his muscular rhetoric. Although far from that of Cold War confrontation, it was steeped in calls for strengthening Russia's stock of strategic weapons.

 In a speech to an audience of top scientists and security officials, he said: "We must raise the efficiency of our defensive potential. The significance of your work is not not declining, but will increase many times over.

 "The nuclear industry is part of our strategic interest. The level of its development defines the status of any power and its ability to defend itself from aggression." He insisted that he was not advocating a new arms race or an increase in Russia's nuclear arsenal, merely its rationalisation to make it more effective.

 He promised to pursue a further reduction in the number of Russia's strategic weapons and redouble efforts to persuade parliament to ratify Start 2, a key demand of the United States.

 He said: "We will retain and strengthen Russia's nuclear weapons and its nuclear complex. This is not about increasing weapons which we have a surplus of anyway. We are talking about increasing the country's security and the dependability of its nuclear shield."

 "Dependability", "efficiency" and "effectiveness" are rapidly turning into the watchwords of the new Putin administration and the president-elect even urged the West to pay more attention to them than to take fright at talk of a strong Russia.

 The West was wrong to detect in such rhetoric a yearning for totalitarianism or a return to repression, he said. "The West misunderstands our thesis about a strong Russian state. It interprets it as an increase in the use of force, the law enforcement agencies and the security services.

 "We have something completely different in mind, an effective state. It is a state which does not just stick to the rules of the game but is able to guarantee the same rules for everyone." Mr Putin was given a warm reception by the nuclear experts and a rapturous welcome by the ordinary people of the extraordinary town.

 Founded in 1955, for years it was known only by its post box number, Chelyabinsk-70, and was never shown on maps. Its main business to this day is the design, development and testing of nuclear weapons.

 Snezhinsk and a wide band of forest around it are surrounded by barbed wire and access to the town is strictly controlled, with armed guards at the main gate.

 Yesterday's visit was the biggest thing to hit Snezhinsk in its brief history and a large crowd turned out to greet their guest on the main square, still dominated by a huge statue of Lenin. Most local people regard their town not as a prison but as a haven from the evils of modern Russia. Galina Grigorievna said: "I would never want it to be opened up. There would be so much crime."

 Snezhinsk has suffered from the collapse of state financing which hit science in the Nineties. The town receives financial aid from America, to prevent a brain drain of Russian scientists giving rogue states such as Iraq or North Korea a boost in attempts to produce a nuclear bomb.