Power Vertical Podcast Ep. 28

The Kremlin is flexing its missiles again.

In his annual State of the Nation speech, Vladimir Putin threatened to target the United States with a scary new generation of nuclear weapons. On his weekly program Vesti Nedeli, television provocateur Dmitry Kiselyev declared which American targets Russia might hit. And to mark the Defenders of the Fatherland holiday, a choir in St. Petersburg’s St. Isaac’s Cathedral performed a song with a charming verse about a nuclear strike on Washington, DC.

So, in case anybody was wondering, yeah, Russia has nukes—and they want to make sure nobody forgets. But what is really driving the bellicose posturing?

Listen to the latest Power Vertical podcast as Brian Whitmore and Donald N. Jensen explore the Kremlin’s missile mania.

Photo: “Military parade on Red Square” by kremlin.ru under CC BY 4.0. 

WP Post Author

Brian Whitmore

Brian Whitmore is Director of the Russia Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Before joining CEPA he was Senior Russia Analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He also worked as a foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe in Moscow and Prague; as a graduate instructor in the Department of Government and International Studies at the University of South Carolina; and as a visiting lecturer in the History Faculty at Mechnikov National University in Odessa, Ukraine and the International Relations Faculty at St. Petersburg State University.

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March 1, 2019

The Power Vertical is a CEPA podcast covering the Kremlin for Kremlin watchers. All opinions are those of the guests and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.