A Russian air force chief said on Saturday that the country could base some strategic bombers in Cuba or on an island offered by Venezuela, the Interfax news agency reported, but a Kremlin official quickly said the military had been speaking only hypothetically.
The US and Russia have been trying to reset their relationship, severely strained over US plans to position missile defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic and by Russia’s invasion of US ally Georgia last year.
Russia has nothing to gain strategically from basing long-range craft within relatively short range of US shores, independent military analyst Alexander Golts said, calling the military statement a retaliatory gesture aimed at hitting back after US ships patrolled Black Sea waters near Georgia.
The chief of staff of Russia’s long range aviation, Major General Anatoly Zhikharev, was quoted by Interfax as saying on Saturday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had offered “a whole island with an airdrome, which we can use as a temporary base for strategic bombers.”
“If there is a corresponding political decision, then the use of the island ... by the Russian Air Force is possible,” Zhikharev was quoted as saying.
Interfax reported he said earlier that Cuba had air bases with four or five runways long enough for the huge bombers and could be used to host the long-range planes.
But Alexei Pavlov, a Kremlin official, said that “the military is speaking about technical possibilities, that’s all. If there will be a development of the situation, then we can comment,” he said.
Mike Hammer, spokesman for US President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, said: “We do not comment on hypotheticals.”
Cuba has never permanently hosted Russian or Soviet aircraft, though Soviet short-range bombers often made stopovers there during the Cold War.
In the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba pushed the world to the brink of nuclear conflict after then US president John F. Kennedy announced their presence to the world. After a tense week of diplomacy, then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev removed the missiles.
Golts said basing Russian bombers in Venezuela or Cuba “has no military sense. The bombers don’t need any base.”
He said the bombers were considered strategic because they were capable of reaching the US.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS