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.
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