Putin's pre-election rocket show backfires

[Brian Turner]

Putin's pre-election rocket show backfires

It was a campaign manager's dream visual, a president weeks from an election on the bridge of a nuclear submarine at sea, watching the test launch of two intercontinental missiles capable of destroying an enemy city.

President Vladimir Putin took his position aboard the Arkhangelsk on Tuesday, television cameras dutifully recording the moment. And he waited. And waited and waited.

After 25 minutes, naval officers announced what had become painfully obvious, that the launch had not taken place, and they shuffled the guests and journalists below deck again, according to Russian reporters on the scene. Mr Putin disappeared without a word. Russian news organisations promptly reported that a malfunction had scuttled the launch.

A few hours later, the navy's top admiral denied that any launch had been planned. A "virtual launch" had been intended from the start, he explained, and it had been a success.

The incident represented an unusual glitch for Mr Putin's tightly scripted political campaign, but not a particularly unusual one for his troubled military.

The launch of the PCM-54 missiles from a submerged submarine, the Novomoskovsk, in the Barents Sea, to a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east was to be the centrepiece of the country's biggest strategic nuclear exercise since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Instead, it became a metaphor for the problems of a military still aspiring to superpower glory with post-superpower resources and training. In recent years the Russian military has seen its submarines sink, its aeroplanes crash and its crack troops fail to subdue rebels in the Chechnya region.

Some of the ballistic missiles involved in this week's nuclear exercises are 27 years old, far past their normal life span of 10 years, because Russia cannot afford to replace them, say military analysts.

"Mr Putin wants to show to all the Russians, who have an inferiority complex, that we're still equal to the United States, we can still be a great power," said Alexander Golts, a military specialist at the Russian news magazine Yezhenedelny Zhurnal. But instead, "it looks like something is out of order".

The cycle of problem and denial had a familiar ring. The navy commander-in-chief who insisted all was well was the same one in charge when the submarine Kursk sank in 2000 and the Government provided multiple contradictory and misleading statements.

"The work was carried out according to the plan," Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov said at a televised briefing. "And to make things completely clear, I'll say that the ballistic exercises were designed as a virtual launch, which was done twice, first in one spot, then in another."

Many scoffed at the explanation. They "haven't learned anything - or if they learned anything from the Kursk, they learned they could lie and get away with it," said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst. In the end, Mr Putin's campaign manager may not have much to worry about. Many Russian journalists who watched from a different ship, the cruiser Peter the Great, did not report the incident. Among the state-controlled television networks, only NTV suggested anything unusual had happened.

- Washington Post

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...072707970.html

[becki]

I love it! virtual launch? how about a virtual president?!?!