MOSCOW, 13 August 2007 — By air, sea and land, the Russian bear’s claws are stretching back into corners of a world that had all but forgotten Moscow as a military superpower.
The latest reminder came this week when Russian strategic Tu-95 bombers flew over the Pacific to within a few hundred kilometers (miles) of the US military base on the island of Guam — and, according to a Russian general, exchanged grins with US fighter pilots sent to intercept.
The dramatic incident on Wednesday capped a summer in which President Vladimir Putin has sought to project power far and wide, building on a rearmament program fuelled by oil and gas revenues.
“At every opportunity Russia is showing its return to power, including military. It’s a demonstration for two audiences — domestic and for the rest of the world,” Moscow-based military analyst Alexander Goltz told AFP.
The long-distance flight by the strategic bombers, impossible for years because of severe underfunding, also recalled an incident in July when bombers deployed near Scotland and Norway during a diplomatic row with Britain.
And it’s not just in the skies that Russia wants the world to take notice.
On Aug. 2 Russian explorers descended 4,261 meters (13,980 feet) under the Arctic to plant a flag on the seabed and demonstrate in a theatrical fashion Moscow’s contested claim to the mineral-rich territory under the North Pole.
The following day, the navy’s chief of staff suggested re-establishing a full-time Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean for the first time since the Soviet era.
Meanwhile the ground army, which was badly mauled in more than a decade of fighting Chechen rebels, is getting new equipment and improved training.
On Thursday and Friday troops were sent to China’s remote province of Xinjiang for international exercises with Chinese and Central Asian forces, 6,000 of whom will next week be hosted on Russian soil for large-scale drills involving artillery, aircraft and paratroopers. The surge in activity is welcomed in a country shocked by the way US military and diplomatic might has spread worldwide over the last 16 years, while Russia has retreated.
“For the Kremlin it’s very important to retain at least one area where we equal the United States — and we are adamant about showing this,” Goltz said. But there are accusations that a newly confident and rearming Russia could be a menace.
The Guam exploit came three days after Russia’s southern neighbor Georgia claimed a Russian warplane fired a missile onto its territory — something Moscow hotly denies.
The scandal over the murder last year in London of fugitive Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko also prompted claims that Moscow was resurrecting the Cold War-era practice of killing dissidents abroad.
Russia’s generals deny they are up to anything sinister. The highlight of the Guam mission, says the commander of strategic bombers, Pavel Androsov, was a midair greeting between Russian and US pilots — a scene reminiscent of the macho 1986 Hollywood film “Top Gun.” “Imagine, you take off from Blagoveshchensk, fly for 13 hours, flying across neutral waters, then our planes meeting their NATO colleagues... with a mutual exchange of smiles,” he was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
The Pentagon confirmed the Russian mission, but denied that a close encounter took place. “It was a nonevent,” one official said on condition of anonymity.
Political commentator Yuliya Latynina said there was nothing to fear from Russia’s muscle-flexing.
“Thank God. We are showing our strength with bombers, the North Pole flag, et cetera, but we are not making war,” she said. “We should be happy that the strategic bombers flew across the Pacific without losses. That’s already a victory.”
