Official: Cuba, Venezuela May Host Russian Strategic Bombers

A Russian Air Force chief said Saturday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered an island as a temporary base for strategic Russian bombers, the Interfax news agency reported.

The chief of staff of Russia’s long range aviation, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, also said Cuba could be used to base the aircraft, Interfax reported.

The Kremlin, however, said the situation was hypothetical.

“The military is speaking about technical possibilities, that’s all,” Alexei Pavlov, a Kremlin official, told The Associated Press. “If there will be a development of the situation, then we can comment,” he said.

Zhikharev said Chavez had offered “a whole island with an airdrome, which we can use as a temporary base for strategic bombers,” the agency reported. “If there is a corresponding political decision, then the use of the island … by the Russian Air Force is possible.”

Interfax reported he said earlier that Cuba has air bases with four or five runways long enough for the huge bombers and could be used to host the long-range planes.

Two Russian bombers landed in Venezuela last year in what experts said was the first Western Hemisphere touchdown of Russian military craft since the end of the Cold War.

via FOXNews.com – Official: Cuba, Venezuela May Host Russian Strategic Bombers – International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News.

Russia Welcomes Barack Obama With Deployment of Nuclear-Capable Missiles

The Kremlin gave Barack Obama a glacial welcome to the world stage when Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, ordered the deployment of nuclear-capable missiles on Nato’s borders for the first time since the Cold War.

In what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to rattle the president-elect, Mr Medvedev said that short-range Iskander surface-to-surface missiles would be stationed in Russia’s baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders EU states Poland and Lithuania.

Delivering his most aggressively anti-American speech yet, Mr Medvedev said he was ordering the deployment in retaliation to a missile defence shield that the United States wants to build in central Europe by 2011.

In comments likely to unnerve the Obama camp, the Russian leader even hinted that he was prepared to use the missiles to destroy the shield, which is to be erected in Poland and the Czech Republic.

“I have approved a new configuration for the military forces of our country,” Mr Medvedev said in his first ever annual address to the two houses of the Russian parliament. “To neutralise – if necessary – the anti-missile system, an Iskander missile system will be deployed in the Kaliningrad region.”

Although the Iskander is normally equipped with conventional warheads, it can be modified to carry a nuclear payload.

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