Three days after a ground-breaking ceremony in Romania marked the beginning of work on the first-ever U.S. land-based missile defense facility in Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday repealed a two-year-old executive order setting up a Kremlin working group to develop missile defense cooperation with NATO.
One day earlier, Putin oversaw an unscheduled exercise of Russia’s nuclear deterrent, incorporating test launches of silo- and sea-based ballistic missiles in central, northern and far-eastern Russia. The Defense Ministry reported a high degree of readiness.
And in the Western hemisphere, two Russian Tupolev “Blackjack” strategic bombers carried out combat training patrols between Venezuela and Nicaragua – a mission similar to one in 2008, which followed an announcement by Putin that Cold War-style long-range flights of strategic bombers – which had been halted after the Soviet Union’s collapse – would resume.