Putin: New nuke cannot be stopped
Russian president makes claim in speech 3 weeks before election
MOSCOW » Deploying emotional language and an animation of a cruise missile streaking toward North America, Russian President Vladimir Putin used an annual speech to his nation on Thursday to claim Russia was developing new nuclear weapons that he said could overcome any U.S. missile defenses.
Putin’s speech, less than three weeks before the Russian presidential election, represented an escalated level of martial rhetoric even by his pugnacious standards. For the first time, Putin claimed that Russia had successfully tested nuclear-propulsion engines that would allow nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and underwater drones to travel for virtually unlimited distances and evade traditional defenses.
He also warned that Moscow would consider a nuclear attack of any size on one of its allies to be an attack on Russia itself, and that it would lead to an immediate response. Putin did not specify which countries he considers allies.
Putin made clear that his dec-
laration of Russian prowess was aimed squarely at the United States, which he accused of fomenting a new arms race by resisting arms- control negotiations, developing new missile- defense systems, and adopting a more aggressive posture in its nuclear strategy. In doing so, he said, the United States had failed to take seriously Russia’s strength.
“No one listened to us,” Putin said. “Listen to us now.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said U. S. officials were “not surprised” by Putin’s comments, but gave no details about the extent of knowledge on Russian military development.
She also rejected Putin’s suggestion that Russia needed to upgrade its firepower because of defensive buildups in the West.
“Our missile defense has never been about [Russia],” White told reporters.
Top U.S. generals have issued warnings for months about the development and deployment of new Russian cruise missiles, urging Congress and the Pentagon to step up technology that could better defend against them. Cruise missiles hug the terrain, flying low and fast, allowing them to evade radar and missile defense systems that are designed to shoot down missiles that fly more slowly and at an arc.
Russia has developed new cruise missiles “with the capability to hold targets at risk at ranges we haven’t seen before,” Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson, the commander of U. S. Northern Command, which is assigned to defend the continental United States, said in Senate testimony in mid-February.
Putin on Thursday described Russian missile capabilities that had been little- discussed publicly in Washington in recent years — cruise missiles equipped with nuclear-propulsion engines, giving them essentially unlim- ited range and the ability to follow an unpredictable flight path. To demonstrate the point, Putin showed a video animation of a missile launched in the Russian Arctic evading missile defenses as it crossed the Atlantic, rounded the southern tip of South America, and headed toward the United States.
“I hope everything that has been said today will sober any potential aggressor,” Putin said.
His claims in his annual speech to lawmakers jolted close observers of the Russian military. An independent Russian military analyst, Alexander Golts, said that weapons experts he had spoken to after the speech “were all in shock, as was I.”
“This is the start of a new Cold War,” Golts said. “This is an effort to scare the West.”
While the weapons Putin unveiled have likely been in development for years, his confrontational tone appeared in part to be a response to the Trump administration’s more hawkish approach to nuclear weapons. Putin said that Pentagon plans announced lastmonth to introduce two new types of nuclear weapons and broaden scenarios for their use “provoke great concern.”
With a defense budget far smaller than that of the United States, Russia is illpositioned to compete in a traditional arms race. But Putin’s visual presentation of new Russian weap- onry seemed designed to show Washington that it intended to maintain pace with the United States as a nuclear superpower.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the weapons Putin described were operable or how close they were to being ready for deployment. But the speech, analysts said, represented a new milestone in mounting U. S.-Russian tensions, which have been rising since the Ukraine crisis erupted four years ago.
“Relations with the U. S. are at a point where the only thing that must be worked on every minute of every day is that this does not lead to a collision,” said Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank.
In his two-hour speech in a historic hall just outside the Kremlin walls, Putin claimed that late last year Russia had successfully tested a cruise missile that was propelled by a nuclear-powered engine. The missile will be able to fly close to the ground and follow an unpredictable flight path, rendering existing missile defenses “useless,” Putin said.
He also said that Russia in December had concluded a multiyear testing cycle for an underwater, nuclear-powered drone.
The successful tests, he said, “will allow the development of a complete new type of weapon — a strategic complex of nuclear arms with rockets fitted with a nuclear-propulsion engine.”