Understand The Times, International

The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, but under the stewardship of President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, a new cold war between Russia and the United States appears to be forming. At least, it's cold for now.

Over the past 30 months, Russian strategic (read nuclear) forces have begun testing U.S. defenses on a much more regular basis. The most recent attempt occurred just days ago when a pair of Russian strategic bombers practiced cruise missile attacks on the U.S. during a training mission -- a mission that U.S. officials said was timed to coincide with a NATO summit in Wales aimed at developing a plan to blunt Russia's aggression toward Ukraine.

American and Canadian systems picked up and tracked the aged Tu-95 "Bear-H" bombers flying a line across the northern Atlantic Ocean "near Iceland, Greenland, and Canada's northeast," the Free Beacon news site reported, adding: Analysis of the flight indicated the aircraft were conducting practice runs to a pre-determined "launch box"--an optimum point for firing nuclear-armed cruise missiles at U.S. targets, said defense officials familiar with intelligence reports.

"Gen. Yuri Yakubov, a senior Defense Ministry official, was quoted by the state-run Interfax news agency as saying that Russia's 2010 military doctrine should be revised to identify the United States and the NATO alliance as enemies, and clearly outline the conditions for a preemptive nuclear strike against them," the Free Beacon reported. Among other necessary doctrinal changes, Yakubov said, "it is necessary to hash out the conditions under which Russia could carry out a preemptive strike with the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces," which are the Russian army's nuclear forces..

September 16 - Russia completes dry run of nuclear bombing attack on America