US downplays Putin’s weapon warning
Analysts say claims of developments likely to be aimed at Russian voters
Russia claims to have developed new strategic weapons impervious to Western defences but experts believe any such development is unlikely to change the balance of global power.
Russian nuclear missiles already have the ability to annihilate the United States, and US defence strategy is based mainly on the deterrent threat of massive nuclear retaliation, not on an impenetrable shield against Russian missiles.
Some analysts said President Vladimir Putin’s statements about the new weapons may speed up what they see as an emerging arms race with the US. Just last month the US cast Russia as the main reason it needs to develop two new nuclear weapons: A lower-yield warhead for a submarine-launched ballistic missile and a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile.
The Trump Administration has vowed to expand US nuclear strength, while criticising Russia’s buildup. Putin’s remarks seem unlikely to change that equation or divert the Trump Administration from its path toward modernising the full US nuclear arsenal at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars while also expanding missile defences.
Putin, in a state-of-the-nation speech in Moscow just days before he is expected to win another six-year presidential term, said his new weapons include a nuclear-powered cruise missile, a nuclear-powered underwater drone that could be armed with a nuclear warhead, and a hypersonic missile that has no equivalent in the world.
The Pentagon recently mentioned Russia’s work on two of those weapons: the underwater drone with intercontinental range and a hypersonic “glide vehicle”, which is a weapon that Washington and Beijing also are working on.
The Pentagon has not publicly talked about the nuclear-powered cruise missile mentioned by Putin. It is reminiscent of US work in the 1960s on a similar weapon, dubbed “The Big Stick”, but ultimately scrapped.
The White House dismissed Putin’s comments.
“President Putin has confirmed what the United States Government has known all along, which Russia has denied: Russia has been developing destabilising weapons systems for over a decade in direct violations of its treaty obligations,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, said in response to Putin’s announcement.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert noted that Putin was speaking ahead of the March 18 election.
“We think he was playing to the
We aren’t threatening anyone, we aren’t going to attack anyone, we aren’t going to take anything from anyone.
Vladimir Putin audience,” she said, adding that Putin’s boasts were irresponsible. She said it was “unfortunate” to watch a Russian video animation Putin showed during his address that she said depicted “a nuclear attack on the United States”. She called the animation “cheesy”.
Although Putin said his announcement was intended to get the attention of the US, he also said he was open to talks with Washington.
“We aren’t threatening anyone, we aren’t going to attack anyone, we aren’t going to take anything from anyone,” he said.
Putin claimed his new weapons will render US and European defences useless, suggesting an escalation of the stakes in a longrunning struggle for stability in the post-Cold War world. Moscow has long threatened to find technological ways around Western missile defences that it sees as threatening and that the West denies are aimed at Russia.
Thomas Karako, a missile defence expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Putin’s statements were consistent with a larger pattern of Russian thinking about nuclear weapons and Russia’s role in the world.
The Trump Administration interprets Russian statements and actions over the past several years, including its annexation of Crimea and military incursions into eastern Ukraine, as requiring a stronger US nuclear deterrent.
Pentagon spokeswoman Dana W. White said the US would stick to its insistence that US missile defences are not a threat to Russia.
“This is not about defence; it’s about deterrence,” she said, adding that the Defence Department was not surprised by Putin’s weapons claims.
Michaela Dodge, a Heritage Foundation missile defence expert, said Putin’s statements confirmed that the Trump Administration was right to build its recent review of nuclear weapons policy around concerns about Russia.
The Administration’s view is that Russian policies and actions are fraught with potential for miscalculation leading to an uncontrolled escalation of conflict in Europe. It specifically points to a Russian doctrine known as “escalate to deescalate”, in which Moscow would use or threaten to use lower-yield nuclear weapons in a limited, conventional conflict in Europe in the belief that doing so would compel the US and Nato to back down. AP Israeli police were last night questioning Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife as part of an investigation into a corruption case involving the country’s telecom giant, Israeli media reported, casting a shadow on the Prime Minister’s upcoming visit to Washington. Channel 10 TV showed footage of police entering Netanyahu’s residence. Reports said Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, was being questioned at another location. Last month, two Netanyahu confidants were arrested on suspicion of promoting regulation worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bezeq telecom company. In return, Bezeq’s news site, allegedly provided positive Netanyahu coverage. It’s the first time that Netanyahu, who as Prime Minister also held the communications portfolio until last year, has been questioned over the affair, known as Case 4000.
Moon to send envoy to North
South Korean President Moon Jae In plans to send a special envoy to North Korea soon to set up more meaningful dialogue between the rivals that Seoul hopes will eventually include discussions over disarming the North of nuclear weapons. Seoul’s presidential office said Moon revealed the plans to US President Donald Trump in a 30-minute telephone conversation. The office did not say how Trump reacted. North Korean officials visiting the South for last month’s PyeongChang Winter Olympics have said leader Kim Jong Un wants to hold a summit with Moon and that North Korea aims to open talks with the United States.
Duterte defiant over crackdown
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered police and soldiers not to co-operate in any investigation into his bloody war on drugs, amid international calls for an external probe. Western countries and rights groups have expressed alarm over the killing by police of more than 4000 Filipinos since Duterte took office in June 2016, plus hundreds more killings of drug users by unknown gunmen. “When it comes to human rights, or whoever rapporteur it is, my order to you: Do not answer. Do not bother,” Duterte said in a speech before elite armed police units in his home city of Davao. “And who are you to interfere in the way I would run my country? You know very well that we are being swallowed by drugs,” Duterte added.
UN plea for eastern Ghouta
A Russian plan for a five-hour pause in fighting in Syria’s eastern Ghouta needs to be expanded to allow aid deliveries to enter and civilians and urgent medical cases to leave, United Nations officials said yesterday. In one of the fiercest onslaughts of Syria’s seven-year civil war, hundreds of people have died in 12 days of bombing of eastern Ghouta, a swathe of towns and farms on the outskirts and outside Damascus that is the last major rebel-controlled area near the capital. The Syrian army and its allies launched ground assaults on the edge of eastern Ghouta yesterday, backed by a bombardment the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said killed 11 people. “You are failing to help us help civilians in Syria,” UN humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland told diplomats from 23 states attending a weekly meeting in Geneva. “Eastern Ghouta is devoid of respect for international law.” About 400,000 people are trapped in government-besieged eastern Ghouta and need life-saving aid. There are about 20,000 well-armed fighters in the area.