Hitting Political Turbulence(Russia)

[CHIMO]

Last Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin donned a military flight suit to fly a Tu-160 supersonic long-range strategic bomber. The plane has a four-man crew and no space for passengers, so Putin occupied the place of the first pilot.

The Russian media covered Putin's flight extensively. It was reported that Putin's Tu-160 performed a midair refueling operation and fired conventional long-range cruise missiles at targets near the northern city of Vorkuta. The Defense Ministry announced that two more Tu-160s with fully professional crews were flying alongside Putin's and that "two of the planes fired missiles."

Yet this seems very unlikely. First, the launch of a new experimental X-555 cruise missile with a conventional warhead is a very risky mission to undertake with the president aboard.

The Kremlin may be too terrified to wait much longer. The ideology of the coming Putin re-election has been already chosen by Kremlin spin doctors: nationalism and militaristic anti-Westernism. The pretext to change the Constitution may be announced very soon.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/23/008.html