01 March 2004 16:38
Putin wants missile tests repeated - Tass
President Vladimir Putin, whose pre-election appearance at military exercises last month was soured by three failed missile launches, told Russia's defence chief on Monday to re-run them, Itar-Tass news agency reported.
Putin, likely to be re-elected in a March 14 poll, staged a highly publicised visit to Russia's biggest strategic exercises in 22 years that were called to test the effectiveness of the nation's nuclear shield and show a revival of its armed forces.
But on February 17, two ballistic missiles failed to lift off from the Novomoskovsk submarine in the Barents Sea. The next day another ballistic missile diverted from course after a launch from the Karelia submarine and was destroyed soon after.
"I task you to prepare as soon as possible new exercises, perhaps on a smaller scale, so I could make sure that all mistakes have been fixed," Tass quoted Putin as telling a meeting of top brass chaired by acting Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov.
Tass quoted Ivanov as saying that analysis of what went wrong during the manoeuvres was already under way. It gave no further details. Russia, where nationalist sentiments have been on the rise in the four years of Putin's presidency, sees its nuclear force as one of the last guarantors of its status as a global power.
Putin, who is widely expected to win the new term by a landslide, has invested considerable effort in reviving the faded image of the impoverished armed forces and making them a respected symbol of the state again.
[http://gazeta.ru/] |
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