Show of strength as bombers’ flights resume

PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin said yesterday he had ordered the military to resume regular long-range flights of strategic bombers, a show of Russia’s resurgent military power which comes amid a chill in relations with the United States.

Speaking after Russian and Chinese forces completed major war games exercises for the first time on Russian soil, Mr Putin said a halt in such flights after the Soviet collapse had affected Russia’s security as other nations had continued such missions — an oblique reference to the US.

“I have made a decision to resume regular flights of Russian strategic aviation,” he said. “We proceed from the assumption that our partners will view the resumption of flights of Russia’s strategic aviation with understanding.”

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the US was not troubled by the Russian decision.

“We certainly are not in the kind of posture we were with what used to be the Soviet Union,” he said. “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.

The Russian-Chinese war games near the Ural mountain city of Chelyabinsk coincided with Russian air force manoeuvres involving strategic bombers which ranged far over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.

“This is a significant change of posture of Russian strategic forces,” said Alexander Pikayev, a senior military analyst with the Moscow-based Institute for World Economy and International Relations. “It’s a response to the relocation of NATO forces closer to Russia’s western border.”

Earlier this month, Russian Tu-95 bombers approached the Pacific Island of Guam — home to a major US military base — for the first time since the Cold War. Last month, two similar bombers briefly entered British air space but turned back after British fighter jets intercepted them.