Vladimir Putin was reportedly so angry when President Joe Biden called him a “killer” in his first sit-down interview after taking office. The Russian president abandoned his quarantine, received a COVID vaccination and moved 28,000 Russian troops to the border with Ukraine.
“It was really a shock. And it changed his behavior a lot,” said Pavel Baev, a senior researcher at the Norwegian International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.
Russian Bear bombers went into action, forcing NATO to scramble ten planes to intercept Russian warplanes flying over the North Atlantic last week, a rare show of strength near the North Pole. Putin on Monday quietly changed Russia’s constitution so he could remain in power until 2036. He would be 83 years old.
“Bluffing comes naturally [Putin]. “He’s much more of a manipulator than a fighter,” Baev said in an interview with Fox News. War is always a risk, always a gamble. So I think he’s much more about showing off his posture, posture, muscle type than going for the right thing, “according to Baev, author of the Jamestown Foundation report War Scare is Putin’s Natural Element. He is much more about gestures, about signal, messages and all sorts of things than starting a real war. ‘
Putin introduces Biden to a figurative “Your move, Joe!”
Facing declining popularity at home, Putin has returned to a “hybrid war” with the US. “President Putin would like to see Russia-US relations reduced to a man-to-man battle between him and President Biden,” said Timothy Frye, author of the new book Weak Strongman: The Limits. of Power in Putin’s Russia. “
By testing the US and NATO response time with hypersonic weapons tests in the Arctic, a military build-up on the border with Ukraine and a constant repression of supporters of its main political opponent Alexei Navalny, is now jailed and on hunger strike , “Vlad the Terrible” indicates he is back and the White House indicates to respond.
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“The Russian government is responsible for its health and well-being. We will continue to monitor the situation closely,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters.
Frye calls on Biden’s government not to play Putin’s game: ‘Putin has increasingly relied on the oppression of his political opponents, and I take that as a sign of weakness rather than a sign of strength’ , Frye said in an interview with Fox News. . “There has been a lot of Putin fatigue in the country. He has been running the country for 20 years, and although he remains widely popular, I think there is a desire in Russia, many elements of Russian society for political change.”
So is Putin’s new war attitude just a hoax? Some experts believe it is for the Pentagon bait to spend more expensively on expensive next-generation weapons.
“There is an arms race. There is competition with the new arms system, including hypersonic, including nuclear power, but again, the Russian economy is not the Soviet economy. Arms race is a very difficult thing to maintain, especially if you compete United States, ‘Baev argues. “I do not think Putin has a long-term horizon. He is much more about today and tomorrow and maybe a little about the day after than about a sustainable arms race. “
New satellite photos of the expansion of Russian military bases and weapons tests raise fears of another “Cold War” build-up and a possible arms race in the Arctic. Allies say that nuclear tests could destroy the delicate ecosystem. A series of recent weapons tests by Moscow and the alarming development of a nuclear-powered megaton torpedo, which could devastate cities along the U.S. east coast with radioactive tsunamis, quickly caught the attention of the U.S. military.
When three Russian submarines burst through the Arctic ice in late March, the Pentagon took notice and Putin praised the naval performance. Each Russian sub can carry 16 ballistic missiles.
“We are watching very closely. Nobody wants to see the North Pole area militarized as a region,” Defense Secretary John Kirby told Pentagon reporters.
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As rising temperatures and climate change melt the ice, the Great Powers of the world are taking control of the Arctic and its new valuable sea lanes.
“Russia is renovating Soviet-era airfields and radar installations, building new ports and search and rescue centers, and building its navy of nuclear and conventional icebreakers. It is also expanding its air network. “and coastal defense missile systems from the United States, thereby enhancing its ability to access / deny access to important parts of the North Pole,” said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell, who notes that Russia recently established two permanent rotational rapid reaction divisions at two Arctic airports.
Commercial satellite photos show Russia expanding its military bases in the Arctic and adding 50 posts that it closed at the end of the First Cold War.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Putin sees the North Pole as a priority. “The economic potential is growing from year to year, you know there are general plans for national development in the Arctic zone,” Russia needs for its oil and gas reserves and newly thawed shipping that will shorten routes from Europe to Asia.
Experts are concerned that the Russian Bear wants to seek a “new Cold War” with the West by testing the latest weapons such as a hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile launched by the Northern Fleet in the Barents Sea and developing the Poseidon – a unmanned crawler with a lurking nuclear power that can travel 6000 kilometers along the seabed.
“Designed not to be detected, once exploded, it could devastate coastal areas in the United States,” said Heather A. Conley, senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic; and Director, Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at CSIS.
Such hypersonic weapons looked like a joke when Vladimir Putin first proposed a prototype to Russian lawmakers three years ago, suggesting they could hit Mar-A-Lago. Now military experts are taking them seriously and spending huge budgets to develop their own.
Think of it as a submarine drone traveling across the North Atlantic. And if it were to explode a radioactive explosion, it would create a tsunami, if you will, emit a massive amount of water along the East Coast and wreak havoc. to the United States, ‘Conley said in an interview with Fox.
Vice Admiral Robert Murrett is deputy director of the Institute for National Security and Terrorism at Syracuse University and was director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency for four years, which oversaw the Pentagon’s top-secret espionage satellites until 2010. He says Russia developed a series of weapons that greatly gripped the U.S. military.
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“The Arctic is a huge shortcut, whether you’re in a plane, whether you’re below the surface of the ocean and also for intercontinental ballistic missiles, it’s going back to the Cold War,” Murrett said. career spent. Russian military movements to monitor.
The U.S. Air Force recently deployed 4 B-1 bombers to a North Pole base in Norway for the first time, another sign that Putin is getting the answer he wants: attention and distraction from his domestic opponents.