MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Putin said on Friday that 95% of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces had been modernized and that the air force had just received four new nuclear-capable supersonic bombers.
The Russian president made the recorded statement on Defender of the Fatherland Day, in honor of the armed forces, a day after a flight aboard a modernized Tu-160M strategic bomber.
On the eve of the second anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin paid tribute to the soldiers fighting there in what he called a “special military operation”, hailing them as fighting heroes for “truth and justice”.
He devoted much of his speech to what he saw as the successes of the military-industrial complex, including the modernization of its nuclear capabilities.
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“Today, the share of modern weapons and equipment in the strategic nuclear (air) forces has already reached 95%, and almost 100% for the naval component,” he said.
Vladimir Putin claimed that Russia had started mass production of its new Zircon hypersonic missiles and had just equipped its army with new strategic submarines and four Tu-160M bombers.
The Russian president regularly maintains that the latest generation of Russian weapons are without equal, even though they have experienced numerous delays and failures, including on the Ukrainian front where several hypersonic missiles deemed impossible to shoot down were intercepted by Russia’s anti-aircraft defenses. ‘old generation.
(Written by Reuters)
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