Russia resurrects nuclear bomber flights

By Alex Rodriguez
The Chicago Tribune

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he has ordered the resumption of long-range strategic nuclear bomber flights, a return to a Cold War-era practice and another sign that the Kremlin is flexing its military might amid a deepening chill in relations with the United States.

Putin's decision comes a week after Russian fighter jets flew within a few hundred miles of a U.S. military base in Guam. It was announced Friday during war games in the Ural Mountains involving some 6,000 troops from Russia, China and four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations that are part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

On Friday, several pairs of Russian Tu-160 and Tu-95MC bombers were flying over Atlantic and Pacific waters, Russian Air Force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky told the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.

Norway sent F-16 fighter jets to observe and photograph the Russian planes, which rounded the northern tip of Norway and flew south over the Norwegian Sea toward the Faeroe Islands before turning back, said Brig. Gen. Ole Asak, chief of the Norwegian Joint Air Operations Center.

Two Russian bombers briefly entered British airspace last month but turned back after British fighter jets intercepted them.

"Starting today, such tours of duty will be regular," Putin said. "Our pilots have been grounded for too long, and they are happy to start a new life."

During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union regularly kept in the air strategic bombers designed to deliver nuclear weapons. With the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 and the economic troubles that followed, it suspended regular flights and drastically cut back military spending.

Now, awash in cash generated by high oil prices, Russia has ratcheted up defense spending and sought to reassert its military prowess. In June, Russia tested a new cruise-missile system and an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of penetrating American defenses.

"This would be a laughable farce but for one serious thing: It is a very dangerous farce," said Alexander Golts, a military analyst who writes for the Russian-language news Web site Yezhednevny Zhurnal. "The strategic planes are up in the air. They may be carrying nuclear missiles or may not, which we will never know for sure, but this risk strongly exists. ... These planes will have to be watched at all times now by our Western colleagues."

As of the beginning of the year, Russia had 79 strategic bombers, according to data exchanged with the United States under an arms control treaty. At the peak of the Cold War, the Soviet long-range bomber fleet numbered several hundred.

Putin said that, while Russia stopped the practice of regular bomber flights after the Soviet collapse, "other nations" continued such missions — an apparent reference to the United States.

Alexander Pikayev, a military-affairs analyst with the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, called Putin's move a "quite significant change in posture for Russian strategic forces."

But the Bush administration downplayed the significance of the renewed patrols.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Russia's decision was not perceived as a security threat.

"We have very good working relations with the Russians," Johndroe said in Crawford, Texas, where President Bush is vacationing.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called Putin's decision "interesting," adding, "If Russia feels as though they want to take some of these old aircraft out of mothballs and get them flying again, that's their decision."

Pikayev said the Russian leader's actions might stem from frustration with the Bush administration's plans for a missile-defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. The United States has tried to reassure Russia that the system is meant to defend against the potential for Iran to develop long-range ballistic-missile capability, but Russia says it suspects the proposed missile shield is aimed at Russia.

"This might be a Russian military response to the military actions of the U.S. and NATO with respect to establishing military infrastructure in former Warsaw Pact countries," Pikayev said, referring to the Cold War Soviet-bloc alliance of Eastern European countries. NATO has expanded in recent years to include the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as well as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

U.S.-Russian relations also have been strained over the Bush administration's criticism of Russia's democracy record, Russia's alleged use of its oil and gas exports to make political demands on its neighbors, and a dispute over the future of Kosovo.

In addition, former Cold War rivals China and Russia share a heightening distrust of what they see as the United States' outsized role in global politics, and they have forged a counterbalancing "strategic partnership" including allying under the SCO.

All three countries are locked in a tense rivalry for influence in Central Asia, the site of vast hydrocarbon resources. The United States supports plans for pipelines that would carry oil and gas to the West and bypass Russia.

China also has shown a growing appetite for energy to power its booming economy.

Putin, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and other leaders of the SCO nations attended the joint exercise, which followed their summit Thursday in Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek.

The summit concluded with a communique that sounded like a thinly veiled warning to the United States to stay away from the region: "Stability and security in Central Asia are best ensured primarily through efforts taken by the nations of the region on the basis of the existing regional associations."

The SCO was created 11 years ago to address religious extremism and border-security issues in Central Asia. In recent years, the group has grown into a bloc aimed at defying U.S. interests in the region.

In 2005, the SCO called for a timetable to be set for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from two member countries, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Uzbekistan evicted U.S. forces later that year, but Kyrgyzstan still has a U.S. base, which supports operations in nearby Afghanistan. Russia also maintains a military base in Kyrgyzstan.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose country has SCO observer status, attended the summit for the second consecutive year, and on Thursday, echoed Russia's criticism of U.S. plans to deploy missile interceptors in Europe.