Russian military exercise marred by errant missile

Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, talks with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, right, and Space Forces Chief Anatoly Perminov as he tours a launch pad in Plesetsk, northern Russia on Wednesday. Putin watched the succesful launch of the Molniya-M booster rocket, which carried a Kosmos military satellite into orbit. PHOTO: AP

Russian Vladimir Putin oversaw one of his country's largest strategic military exercises in years for a second day on Wednesday, and, for a second day, something went wrong.

An ballistic missile fired from the nuclear submarine Karelia in the Barents Sea veered wildly off course 98 seconds after the launching and self-destructed, a navy spokesman, Captain Igor Dygalo, said. The cause of the malfunction, he said, would be investigated.

The missile was supposed to have crossed the Arctic and landed in a missile range in Kamchatka in the far eastern region, but instead exploded in the upper atmosphere over the Barents.

On Tuesday, two missiles from the submarine Novomoskovsk in the Barents failed to launch -- for reasons that are still in dispute -- as Putin watched from the deck of another submarine.

Officials described the planned launchings on Tuesday as a centerpiece of the exercises, which involved Russia's strategic nuclear forces. On Tuesday, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov denied initial reports that the missiles had malfunctioned.

He said that the missile tests had always been planned as simulations, not as live fire exercises. But Kommersant and Izvestia both reported Wednesday that the launchings were aborted because of a malfunction in one of the missiles. Both newspapers reported that the navy was trying to cover up an embarrassing failure.

Putin's to the exercises -- much publicized and intensely covered by state television -- came just weeks before the March 14 presidential election and appeared intended to highlight his role as the commander-in-chief of a revived Russian military.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst and journalist, said the glitches in the exercises reflected the aging of Russia's ballistic missiles, many of them nearly 30 years old.

"With such old missiles, mis-haps do happen," he said. "They have happened before. This time the PR surrounding the president and the presidential campaign meant more attention was paid."