Leftists may still be telling each other conspiracy theories about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin being best buds, but here in reality things are rather different. As in “one threatening to kill the other” different.
Vice reports that during the Russian president’s annual address to the country’s Federal Assembly on Thursday, Putin presented a video demonstration of the Kremlin’s new RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile system.
“With the capabilities for beating missile defense systems, this new system can be used under any conditions,” Putin declared before playing the following video — which simulated the missiles landing on a very alarming piece of American soil:
Its target was Florida’s West coast, an area—Gizmodo pointed out—that’s very close to Trump’s “Winter White House” Mar-a-Lago. It’s also important to note that Russia has used this particular 3D rendering of missiles coming down on Florida for years. Here’s a video of the same animation uploaded to YouTube 2015.
Putin spent the ten minutes leading up to this video telling the world the US only had itself to blame for the new heavy ICBM. In 1972, Moscow and Washington signed an anti-ballistic missile treaty that limited the amount of anti-ballistic missile shielding each country could use. In 2001, the Bush administration pulled out of the treaty.
For good measure, Putin stressed that “Russia has been developing…extremely effective methods to defeat missile defense and all our ICBMs are equipped with such systems now.”
“We’ve repeatedly warned the US and the European NATO members, that we will take steps to neutralize threats that arise from the deployment of their missile defense system,” he continued. “Everyone ignored us. No one wanted to listen to us. So, listen to us now.”
Fortune adds that Florida is also the home of various tourist attractions including Walt Disney World, making it a particularly devastating target for civilian casualties, as well as MacDill Air Force Base, which is the headquarters of both United States Central Command and United States Special Operations Command.
On Friday, the UK Independent reports, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the presentation was meant to convey any sort of military threat. The maps supposedly had “no relation to specific countries,” and there was neither a “Florida” map “nor any map of any state in the US.”
Mr Putin’s address was not a “confrontational” speech, he said, but a demonstration of Russia’s potential for technological advance. A new weapons pitch did not amount to a “militaristic” speech, he said.
Instead, Russia’s new weapons were a “logical response” to ensuring “parity” between the world’s two nuclear superpowers: “We are not developing weapons that would neutralise the enemy’s own strategic arsenal, and we are defenceless against some of their weapons.”
For what it’s worth, the Guardian reports that mayors in the Tampa Bay area aren’t worried — not yet, at least:
“I have the utmost confidence in our national security, military and intelligence community to secure our borders and protect our country,” [Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn] said.
“It’s unfortunate that Mr Putin chose to include Tampa Bay in his threat but at this point we’ll write it off as overheated rhetoric designed to prop up his failing regime.”
The mayor of neighbouring St Petersburg, Rick Kriseman, sounded equally chill. “We trust the inclusion of our region in that video was simply random,” he said […]
George Cretekos, the mayor of Clearwater, said: “While Mr Putin may be implying that Florida is a target, MacDill has long been recognised as a critical component of the country’s national defence and I remain confident in our national security capabilities.
Do you think this is just saber-rattling, or should the United States be prepping for a hotter conflict with our former Cold War adversary?
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