Perhaps this new confidence to have maneuvers and launch long range missiles into the Pacific is the result of a deal that lead Russia to withdraw from Georgia and tone down the rhetoric, and say they weren’t going to sell advanced weapons to Iran and Syria after all. Was the proposed US eastern Europe missile defense system involved in the deal? We haven’t heard much about that lately, except for the second article below.
Note that the fleet wasn’t in the Pacific itself: the Barents Sea is between Norway and Russia, but the Russian nuclear sub Tula fired its missile into the Pacific from that location.
SEVEROMORSK, October 11 (Itar-Tass) — The nuclear-powered missile submarine cruiser Tula of the Russian Northern Fleet carried out training firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile Sineva from the Barents Sea on Saturday.
The sea strategic nuclear forces’ readiness was checked with firing of a ballistic missile at a longer range, the head of the Russian Navy’s information and public relations service, Igor Dygalo, said.
In the Navy history, it is the first firing of an IBM not at the Kura firing range on Kamchatka, but at an area in the Pacific, he noted.
Related news from Russia:
PLESETSK, October 12 (Itar-Tass) – A training launching of a RS-12M Topol was made on Sunday in the presence of Supreme Commander-in-Chief, President Dmitry Medvedev during the Stability-2008 exercise.
Before the launch, the president received a report by commander of the Strategic Missile Troops Nikolai Solovtsov. He reported the president that the aim of this launch from Plesetsk is to confirm stability of the main flying and technical specifications of the missile during the prolonged period of operation.
Specialists say that Topol is one of versions of the Russian reply to the deployment of the US anti-missile system in Europe.
