Russian ‘anti-terror’ drill simulates ‘all-out nuclear war’ against United States

Calling it an ‘anti-terror’ drill, the Russian government is preparing for a massive exercise simulating a nuclear attack on the United States.

It is reported to be the largest such exercise since the dying days of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to oversee the exercise personally later this month, just before his anticipated re-election.

The Associated Press calls the maneuvers "an exercise involving test-firing of missiles and flights by dozens of bombers in a massive simulation of all-out nuclear war."

Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, told a Russian press agency that the exercise will involve launches of "several" intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Tu-160 strategic bombers will launch cruise missiles over the North Atlantic in a pattern typical of an attack on the US mainland, and other bombers will drill over the Arctic. Russia’s ballistic missile defense (BMD) system around Moscow will respond to system warnings of an enemy ICBM attack. At least one strategic ballistic missile submarine will fire from the Barents Sea.

A prominent Moscow newspaper says that Russian officials characterize the exercise as practicing for defense against terrorist attack.

The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration, has not made an issue of Russia’s sporadic but continued modernization of its strategic nuclear missiles and its annual practice drills to attack the United States. Likewise, it has not made badly-needed changes in the Nunn-Lugar program that would prevent US disarmament aid from being used in ways that would aid Russia’s strategic nuclear missile modernization, nor has it linked Russia’s debt relief and economic recovery to its nuclear modernization.

Some Russians speculate that Putin agreed to the US withdrawal of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty because Moscow had developed countermeasures, making its MIRVed ICBMs invulnerable. After the US helped Russia dismantle obsolete ICBMs, Moscow replaced some of them with the advanced SS-27 Topol-M. Russia even got the American taxpayer to foot the bill through IMF and other loans.