- Russia's biggest military exercise since the collapse
of communism flopped yesterday, ruining an attempt to project Vladimir
Putin as a global leader and reaffirm the country's status as a nuclear
superpower.
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- With Mr Putin and a host of military officials watching
from the nuclear submarine Arkhangelsk, two intercontinental ballistic
missiles went wrong during a firing from a submarine believed to be the
Novomoskovsk. They were aimed at Kamchatka on the Pacific coast. A malfunctioning
satellite was blamed.
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- Putin promised that Russia will again be a global power
The Russian website gazeta.ru said one of the missiles blew up shortly
after firing. The navy refused to confirm the accident.
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- Television, which had been leading news programmes with
glowing reports of the exercises, quickly reduced them to a short bulletin.
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- For Mr Putin, decked out in naval garb, it was an embarrassing
setback.
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- With less than a month before presidential elections,
he has sought to cast himself as a hard man in the mould of the old Soviet
leaders.
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- He has also pledged to preside over a return to the days
when Russia was a powerful global player.
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- Last week he said the collapse of the Soviet Union had
been a "national tragedy of enormous scale".
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- Speaking before the exercises, which began at the end
of January and are due to last until the end of this month, Mr Putin appealed
again to the Soviet nostalgia that many Russians still feel.
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- "The Soviet Union and its power, primarily projected
through its nuclear forces, was a factor that balanced power in the world,"
he said. "We need to maintain this power and we will."
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- American military planners may take some satisfaction
at the Kremlin's embarrassment, but it is unlikely to help the steady souring
of relations.
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- Some analysts predict a further deterioration over the
coming months as the former Cold War enemies skirmish over influence in
central Asia and the Caucasus.
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- In recent months America has also stepped up pressure
on Russia to improve its democratic record.
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- Ties between Moscow and Washington are significantly
cooler than two years ago when Russia gave wholehearted backing to the
war against terrorism.
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- Last week Col Gen Yuri Baluyevsky, the first deputy chief
of the general staff of the armed forces, said that the current exercises
were prompted partly by concerns about American policy.
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- Other Russian officials have spoken out against the expansion
of Nato into the Baltic and America's decision to scrap Cold War arms treaties
and push ahead with missile defence.
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- Sergei Ivanov, the defence minister, recently threatened
to pull out of the European treaty on conventional forces, which underpins
military stability on the continent, because of concern over US expansion.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2004%2F02%2F18%2Fw
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