Putin saves Soviet relic: nuclear race

The withdrawal of the United States, last year, from a historic disarmament treaty ignited an old speech in the Kremlin

PARIS.- On February 23rd, the public who listened to the choir of

Saint PETERSBOURG

in St. Isaac's Cathedral he was disconcerted. At the end of the concert, outside the program, the
troop He started singing a well-known song about a Russian nuclear attack in the United States.

Written by Andrei Kozlovsky in the 1980s, the text says something like this: "In a submarine loaded with a nuclear machine and a dozen bombs of a hundred megatons, I Crossed the Atlantic and called the shooter Petrov to aim for Washington. "

In the case of a concert in an Orthodox temple, many described the episode as "inappropriate". Russian political scientists, and especially Westerners, see it as an additional gesture of the Kremlin's recent campaign of posturing.

Three days ago, in his fifteenth annual speech before the two chambers of the Russian Parliament on the state of the nation,

Vladimir Poutine

he warned again that his country would react "symmetrically and asymmetrically" against the United States to the eventual deployment of medium-range missiles in Europe. This possibility was opened after Washington decided to suspend its participation in the Treaty on the Control of Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) and Moscow reacts by the same measure.

Putin rejected the US argument that he was leaving the treaty because Russia was not respecting the provisions of its content, explaining that the first to violate this agreement were the Americans "by deploying Tomahawk missiles in Poland and Romania. ".

The Kremlin leader insisted that his country never failed to comply with the INF, rejected Washington's "imaginary" accusations and especially warned that if American missiles appeared in Europe, "Russia would be required to manufacture and deploy medium and long-range weapon types that can be used not only against the countries from which the direct threat originates, but also against the territories where the decision centers are located. for the use of missile systems that threaten us ", with clear reference to United States.

According to the escalation of military verbiage deployed by the Kremlin, the most important Sunday program of the public channel Rossia 1 showed this week a map showing missile targets in the United States, including the Pentagon and the Presidential Residence from Camp David. Famous for his anti-American stance, Dimitri Kiselyov, Putin's personal friend, explained that a hypersonic missile prepared by Russia "is able to achieve these goals in less than five minutes".

Calling the warnings of "hypocritical propaganda" of Vladimir Putin, the Trump administration announced that it did not intend to deploy medium-range missiles in Europe. According to Eric Pahon, spokesman for the Pentagon, the United States does not have this type of missile on the Old Continent either.

"Whenever Putin launches such grandiloquent threats and uses his devastating weapons, he should think that he only reinforces the willingness of NATO members to work together for collective security," he said. -he adds.

It is, however, a statement of good intentions. According to officials of the US administration, Donald Trump expressed in 2018 his intention to withdraw the United States from NATO.

If this happens, without deploying a single missile, the Kremlin leader would see his dream come true: the disintegration of the military alliance between the United States, Europe and Canada, which for 70 years has was a central element of deterrence, first against the Soviet Union and then to Russia's Vladimir Putin.