Putin watches as his troops fire nuclear-capable missiles
VLADIMIR PUTIN put on a devastating show of military might yesterday with drills involving nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles, submarines and troop beach landings as Western analysts feared Russia is poised to invade Ukraine within days.
The Russian president watched the action unfold on television screens in a situation room in the Kremlin, where he was joined by his close ally, the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
Hypersonic missiles were launched from the air, sea and land, including two intercontinental ballistic missiles that could be used to strike Britain or the United States in case of an all-out nuclear war.
The two ballistic missiles were launched – one from a site in northwest Russia and the second from a submarine in the Barents Sea – hitting targets thousands of miles away in the far east peninsula of Kamchatka, Moscow said.
Footage released by the Kremlin also showed a MiG-31K fighter jet launching a Kinzhal hypersonic missile at a mock-concrete building, destroying the target.
Ships from the northern and Black Sea fleets also fired Tsirkon hypersonic missiles and Kalibr cruise missiles, both recent additions to Russia’s armoury that could be used in Ukraine.
The Kremlin said the exercises are part of regular training and denied they signal an escalation of the standoff with Ukraine, where an estimated 150,000 Russian forces are massed on the border.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the annual drills had been long-planned and ‘should not cause anyone concern’.
But Dmitry Stefanovich, a military expert at the Moscow-based IMEMO RAS think tank, said: ‘In the context of the current situation on our western borders, this will certainly be perceived as a signal.’
Manoeuvres involved warships of the Black Sea Fleet, based on the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Russia’s RIA news agency aired footage showing a split screen of various top senior military chiefs as well as Putin, who ordered the drills to begin.