Putin, watches military drills on countering nuclear strike

MOSCOW, May 8 (Itar-Tass) - Russian President Vladimir Putin together with the leaders of a number of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) member countries on Thursday watched scheduled RF military command and control drills. The RF head of state on the exercise results gave instructions to remedy separate shortcomings, revealed during the drills. Thus, the military in the exercise demonstrated to the supreme commander-in-chief of the RF Armed Forces the engagement of separate missile and artillery forces and military units, aviation and air defence for the destruction of ground force groupings and rebuffing a massive missile and air strike of the enemy, as well as delivering a massive retaliatory counter-strike by nuclear deterrence forces and rebuffing the enemy’s nuclear strike by the missile defence system of the city of Moscow. The drills were organised to check the RF Armed Forces’ command and control system, the reliability of transmission of training orders and signals from the RF National Defence Control Centre to military districts to the command posts of military formations and units, to the Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN), to the aerospace defence forces and long-range aviation command. The exercise involved strategic bombers, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines of the Pacific and Northern Fleets, strategic land-based mobile missile systems, combat power of the aerospace defence. The drills also involved missile and artillery forces of the Southern and Central Military Districts. After the drills, Putin gave instructions to find out the cause of failure during the firing of the TOS-1 heavy flame thrower system. “Take care of this,” he told the Central Military District commander, Colonel General Nikolai Bogdanovsky. It was found out during the exercise that the control command was transmitted to the TOS-1 combat crew head undistorted, but it was transmitted with delay from him to the launcher. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Tajikistani President Emomali Rakhmon and President of Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev were watching the exercise together with Putin from the RF National Defence Control Centre. Learn more on itar-tass.com