Rahat Chowdhury
As Vladimir Putin took oath for the Presidency for the third time in 2012, He ordered the government to ensure the development of the navy and Military, to protect the country’s sovereignty. Putin has led major military drills of nuclear forces and personally directed the test-firing of four intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the exercises in the recent days. Direct involvement of a president on this ballistic missiles exercise was never reported by kremlin before. Quoting from Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman that the drills on Thursday (local time) involved all elements of the military’s nuclear triad — nuclear submarines, and artilleries. He added, the drills were regular and not linked to any international developments. Recently a video was shared by the ministry of defense on twitter which shows the drills of ballistic missiles. During that drill, a Topol ICBM was fired from the Plesetsk launchpad in northwestern Russia towards a designated target of kura firing range in Kamchatka Peninsula. In this September, the Zapad (West) 2017 a drill held jointly by Russia and Belarus have worried some NATO members, who have criticized what they have described as a lack of transparency and questioned Moscow’s intentions. Russia has rejected the criticism.Russian Navy is not lagging behind from the Military when comes to ammunitions and troops. Russian Navy has more than 100 warships and other vessels. Where it comes for the drills of Navy, In 2013 it had 5,900 days of sailings, 2014 (12,700), 2015(14,200), 2016 (15,600) and in 2017(17,100) quoted from the Commander of the Russian Navy, Admiral Vladimir Korolev during an interview. Admiral pointed the importance of the new Northern Command, which he described as the great tool of security for Russia’s interest in the arctic zone. Now, the military task is to make the Northern Command more effective and self-sufficient.In a word Russia’s warships have been sailing three times more this year than they did five years earlier.More New vessels are coming, like the navy icebreaker “Ilya Muromets” currently under testing but arriving to the Northern Fleet by year-end.
Source: The Barents Observer, uawire.org, 9news