Russia Flexes Muscles With Long-range Bomber Flights Near U.S. Shores

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Russia plans to send long-range bomber jets to the Gulf of Mexico in what appears to be Moscow’s latest provocative maneuver in its increasingly frosty relations with the West, especially the united States. CNN reports:

Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Wednesday that “we have to maintain (Russia’s) military presence in the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific, as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico” — including sending bombers “as part of the drills.”

It’s an argument U.S. officials don’t seem to be buying. “We do not see the security environment as warranting such provocative and potentially destabilizing activity,” a senior Obama administration official said Thursday.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki offered a similar response. “We don’t think there is a current situation in the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific or the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico that warrants additional flights in out-of-area territory,” she told reporters.

That’s not all. Shoigu said that Russia will also boost its security in Crimea, the region it annexed from Ukraine earlier this year.