Russian state television has broadcast a map of the US showing military facilities Moscow would target in the event of a nuclear strike, in a report that was unusual even by its own bellicose standards.
The targets included the Pentagon and the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. A hypersonic missile Russia is developing would be able to hit them in less than five minutes, it said.
Last week, Vladimir Putin said Moscow was militarily ready for a “Cuban missile-style” crisis if the US wanted one.
With tensions rising over Russian fears that the US might deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe as a cold war-era arms-control treaty unravels, Putin has said Russia would be forced to respond by placing hypersonic nuclear missiles on submarines near US waters.
The US said it had no immediate plans to deploy such missiles in Europe and dismissed Putin’s warnings as disingenuous propaganda. It does not currently have ground-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles that it could place in Europe.
However, its decision to quit the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty over an alleged Russian violation, which Moscow denies, has freed it to start developing and deploying such missiles.
Putin has said Russia does not want a new arms race, but he has dialed up his military rhetoric.
Some analysts have seen his approach as a tactic to try to re-engage the US in talks about the strategic balance between the two powers, which Moscow has long pushed for, with mixed results.
In the Sunday evening broadcast, Dmitry Kiselyov, the presenter of Russia’s main weekly TV news programme, Vesti Nedeli, showed a map of the US and identified several targets he said Moscow would want to hit in the event of a nuclear war.
source: https://www.theguardian.com