(FP) Normally inured to the fire and brimstone of Russian state TV, international audiences perked up their ears last month when a Sunday evening news show singled out a handful of locations in the United States that could be targets for annihilation by Russia’s new hypersonic weapons.
“For now, we’re not threatening anyone,” said the TV host Dmitry Kiselyov, who some label Russia’s chief propagandist. However, Russia worries that the United States, after having withdrawn from an important arms control treaty that regulated missile deployment, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, might again station intermediate-range missiles in Europe. “But if such a deployment takes place, our response will be instant,” Kiselyov said. […]
“Fundamentally, I don’t think they change much in terms of strategic balance and military capability,” said Pavel Podvig, a nuclear weapons expert and senior research fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. […]
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