President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday took a brief flight on a supersonic bomber, a part of his pre-election effort to challenge confidence and energy inside Russia, and a conspicuous reminder to the West of his nation’s nuclear capabilities.
The flight took solely half-hour, the Kremlin stated in an announcement, however the vary of the wide-wing Tu-160M, also referred to as a White Swan in Russia, permits it to succeed in the US with two dozen nuclear weapons aboard.
Russian state tv confirmed Mr. Putin, 71, climbing up the steps beneath the large warplane, one of many largest and heaviest on the earth, earlier than it took off from the runaway of an airfield in Kazan, a metropolis east of Moscow. The Kremlin launched a video of Mr. Putin’s flight, displaying him sitting in a pilot’s seat.
Upon disembarking the airplane, Mr. Putin instructed reporters that the flight left a very good impression and praised the brand new modernized bomber as “very dependable.”
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, instructed state tv that Mr. Putin made the choice to take the flight spontaneously on Thursday when he visited an aviation manufacturing facility in Kazan, the place he inspected 4 modernized Tu-160M bombers.
However since he grew to become Russian president greater than 20 years in the past, Mr. Putin has develop into recognized for publicity stunts, designed to forged him as a powerful chief of an incredible energy.
Over this time, Mr. Putin has flown in a fighter jet, plunged into the ocean in a submersible and steered Siberian cranes to their winter habitat in a motorized grasp glider. The broadly lined stunts projected Mr. Putin as a bodily match and fearless chief.
The flight on the bomber seemed to be an effort to ship a pointed message amid essentially the most dire geopolitical battle between Moscow and the West because the darkest occasions of the Chilly Struggle.
The Tu-160M is a modernized model of a Soviet-designed strategic bomber. Part of the Russian nuclear triad, the Tu-160M’s major mission is to ship nuclear bombs at lengthy distances in case of a nuclear conflict. In 2005, Mr. Putin took a flight in an older model of the bomber.
