Russian President Vladimir Putin brought the stars of his strategic missile arsenal to the show of force he made to the West on Saturday, alongside Belarus-allied dictator Aleksandr Lukachenko.
From the command center of the Kremlin, the Russian president ordered the firing of two models of hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and two missiles of the type that would be used in a nuclear war against the United States.
The exercise had been announced the day before, as if it were routine, but routine certainly isn’t. According to military analyst Ivan Barabanov, there is no memory of so many shots from such varied models in a single maneuver — nine out of its timing.
Putin is at the center of the clash with the West over his demands for NATO (the western military alliance) not to expand, and he has Ukraine surrounded by 150,000 troops who, according to US President Joe Biden, should invade the country. neighbouring country.
The Russian denies the intention, but the worsening situation in eastern Ukraine, occupied by Kremlin allies, has raised the eyebrows of the most skeptical about a confrontation.
Thus, the exercise served as a reminder to opponents about the Russian military potential, which gained unprecedented muscle since the Cold War from the reform of the sector, initiated after the almost embarrassing war against tiny Georgia in 2008.
Today, as the most recent edition of “Military Balance”, an annual publication of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London attests, in addition to being a nuclear power, Russia has a sophisticated capacity to promote rapid action in its most immediate strategic environment – Europe, to begin.
“The tasks envisaged during the exercise of the strategic deterrent forces were fully accomplished, and all the missiles hit the designated targets,” the Kremlin said. Lukashenko, who has always been an aloof Putin ally, has fallen under his political orbit after asking Moscow for help quelling protests against his rigged 2020 re-election.
He already has 30,000 Russian soldiers in his territory carrying out maneuvers scheduled to end on Sunday (20). Both leaders said, after meeting on Friday, that the troops would return — but they did not rule out staying if they felt it was necessary, fueling Western fears that a front was set up there to attack Kiev and northern Ukraine.
No figures were released, but the nature of the missiles used in the exercise.
One of the stars is the Tsirkon, a ship-launched hypersonic missile that was likely fired from the frigate on which it is tested, Admiral Gorchkov of the Northern Fleet in the Arctic. It has the ability to carry a nuclear warhead, but its primary function is to attack other vessels.
Hypersonic weapons fly at more than five times the speed of sound (6,174 km/h). Tsirkon (zircon, in Russian) goes to almost double that. China and even North Korea test models of the type, and the US for now is behind the race of these weapons of the future, which can usually maneuver towards the target, led by Russia.
Another model fired, in the case of fighters and bombers, was the Kinjal (dagger), which is already in operation with MiG-31 and Tu-22M3 aircraft. It can use smaller or conventional nuclear warheads, and it reaches Mach 12 (12 times the speed of sound, or 14,700 km/h).
Significantly for the present, in the field of Kapustin Iar (Astrakhan, southeastern Russia) missiles Iskander-M (defender, in the Arabic origin of the word), short-range ballistic model (500 km) were launched. There are several batteries of him in the exercises in Belarus, which means that Kiev would be easily in his sights in the event of a war.
Repeating the performance that impressed Western analysts in Syria’s civil war, the Russians said they fired Kalibr (caliber) cruise missiles from submarines in the North and Black Seas, the scene of tensions with Ukraine.
Long-range strategic bombers Tu-95MS also launched these cruise missiles, which fly at subsonic speeds maneuvering across terrain, against targets in fields on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East.
Finally, the icing on the cake of the attempt to intimidate the West, an intercontinental missile Iars (Russian acronym for nuclear deterrent rocket) and a Sineva (blue) were launched.
The first was fired from the Plesestk base in the Russian arctic region near Finland. It flew about 5,500 km in Russian airspace and reached the Kura proving ground in Kamchatka. The Sineva is a submarine-launched missile in operation in the Russian Navy.
It was fired from the Northern Fleet’s Karelina nuclear submarine from the Barents Sea — not far from the point from which the Iars took off. It also hit Kura. The two missiles are designed to deliver multiple nuclear warheads to targets on other continents.
On Friday, Biden said he did not believe Putin “remotely thought” of a nuclear war. The five atomic powers that sit on the UN Security Council, Russia, the US, China, the UK and France recently signed a document reaffirming that they would not initiate such a conflict.
