Putin to ‘target US’ if it deploys missiles in Europe
President Vladimir Putin threatened the United States with an expanded array of strategic weapons yesterday, announcing a new hypersonic missile and the early deployment of nuclear submarines equipped with long-distance underwater drones.
He warned that Russia’s new weapons would target the US if it deployed missiles to Europe. “We will be forced to take both reciprocal and asymmetrical measures,” he said. “Let them count the range and speed of our weapons. This is all we ask.”
Mr Putin’s harsh rhetoric, delivered in his annual state of the nation address, was a return to familiar territory. Exactly one year ago he used the same speech to unveil a new generation of six nuclear weapons, and deployed an animated video showing a direct strike on Florida to emphasise his point. Russia’s new “invincible” weapons would force the west to finally listen, he told the assembled political dignitaries that day.
This year – amid falling presidential ratings – many expected a different, less belligerent approach, focussed on everyday concerns of ordinary Russians. Ahead of the speech, sources within the president’s own administration briefed that the president would offer an “optimistic” vision.
For a while, Mr Putin lived up to those expectations. This would be a speech that concerned the welfare of Russians alone, he began. He presented himself as the guardian of the welfare of the nation. There would be more money for clinics, for schools, for hospitals. Benefits would be increased. Mortgage holidays introduced. There would be more organic food.
He even rallied against the excesses of his own system. He would fight, he said, against the “arrogance” of his own bureaucrats, who often failed to “empathise, understand and respect” ordinary people. He would side with “honest businessmen” who shouldn’t face the threat of criminal persecution. And he would continue to “intervene” against the out of town landfill sites that have been scourging many people’s lives.
At times, Mr Putin’s speech seemed to be directed to an alternate reality. It was not immediately clear, for example, from where the money for his kinder social system would come – especially given the country’s struggling, sanction-hit economy. The president’s investment-friendly rhetoric likewise sat in contrast to last week’s arrest of a top foreign investor – on what appeared to be fabricated fraud charges. And protesters against toxic landfill sites across Russia would be forgiven for thinking the president didn’t have their back when they were pressured and intimidated by his security services.
At times, it seemed as if Vladimir Putin had adopted the manifesto of his fiercest critic, Alexei Navalny, and was agitating to “overthrow himself”, quipped Roman Dobrokhotov, an independent Russian journalist. It was over an hour in, and with a turn to homegrown defence and missile technology, that Russia’s well-established president hit a more natural groove.
To increasing applause in the hall, Mr Putin read out a list of Russia’s recent accomplishments. The army had already taken delivery of the Avangard nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle, he said. The new technology, which allows missiles to make evasive in-flight manoeuvres, was a breakthrough as momentous as “sending a satellite into space”.