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Two strategic bombers to carry out practice flights over neutral waters before returning home
Two Russian strategic bombers have landed in Venezuela as part of military manoeuvres, the Interfax news agency reported today, at a time when US-Russian relations are at their most strained since the cold war.
Interfax cited a Russian defence ministry statement as saying the two Tu-160 strategic bombers landed today to carry out training flights over neutral waters in the next few days before returning to Russia.
The arrival of the Russian strategic warplanes in what the US considers its backyard followed a statement at the weekend by the Venezuelan government saying that four Russian ships would participate in joint exercises in the Caribbean this year.
The US sought to make light of that announcement. A US state department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said that if Russia really intended to send ships to the Caribbean, “then they found a few ships that can make it that far”.
Venezuela said a taskforce including four Russian naval ships and 1,000 Russian military personnel would take part in mid-November exercises with Venezuelan frigates, patrol boats, submarines and aircraft.
News of the planned exercise came shortly after Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister and former president, warned that Nato’s deployment of several warships to the Black Sea in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Georgia last month would not go unanswered.
Read the rest of the story in The Guardian.
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