President Vladimir Putin vowed to hunt down those responsible for blowing up a Russian airliner over Egypt and intensified air strikes against militants in Syria, after the Kremlin concluded a bomb had destroyed the plane last month, killing 224 people.

Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria and announced it would expand its strike force by 37 planes.

“We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them,” Putin said of the plane bombers at a somber Kremlin meeting broadcast on Tuesday. The FSB security service swiftly announced a $50 million bounty in a global manhunt for the bombers.

Until Tuesday, Russia had played down assertions from Western countries that the Oct. 31 crash was the work of terrorists, saying it was important to let the official investigation run its course.

But four days after Islamist gunmen and bombers killed at least 129 people in Paris, Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB, said in televised comments that traces of foreign-made explosive had been found on fragments of the downed plane and on passengers’ personal belongings. (Read more from “Putin Vows Payback After Confirmation of Egypt Plane Bomb” HERE)

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Russia will counter NATO’s U.S.-led missile defense program by deploying new strike weapons capable of piercing the shield, President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday.

Putin told defense officials that by developing defenses against ballistic missiles Washington aims to “neutralize” Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent and gain a “decisive military superiority” . . .

“Over the past three years, companies of the military-industrial complex have created and successfully tested a number of prospective weapons systems that are capable of performing combat missions in a layered missile defense system. Such systems have already begun to enter the military this year. And now we are talking about development of new types of weapons,” Putin said. (Read more from “Russia to Deploy New Weapons to Counter US Missile Shield” HERE)

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his Security Council to assess Russia’s readiness to survive a nuclear, chemical or biological disaster and has told them to stockpile protective equipment if necessary.

The order was given during one of Putin’s regular meetings with the council that is made up of the heads of Russia’s intelligence, defense and law enforcement agencies. High-ranking ministers and the speaker of the Russian house of parliament are also permanent members of the group.

According to the government website, Putin told the council that it was important to review and potentially strengthen Russia’s defense protocols against “nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological threats, both in peacetime, and—God forbid, of course—in wartime . . .

The Russian president also proposed to the council that Russia should begin developing and producing personal protective equipment against nuclear, biological or chemical threats. “In the near future we should set up an inventory of individual means of protection for citizens, to determine which of them have become theoretically and technically obsolete, and develop measures to replenish stocks of such assets in accordance with modern designs,” Putin said. (Read more from “RUMORS of WAR: Putin Orders Russia to Stockpile Protective Equipment for Nuclear Threat” HERE)

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Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.

The issue goes beyond old worries during the Cold War that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.

While there is no evidence yet of any cable cutting, the concern is part of a growing wariness among senior American and allied military and intelligence officials over the accelerated activity by Russian armed forces around the globe. At the same time, the internal debate in Washington illustrates how the United States is increasingly viewing every Russian move through a lens of deep distrust, reminiscent of relations during the Cold War.

Inside the Pentagon and the nation’s spy agencies, the assessments of Russia’s growing naval activities are highly classified and not publicly discussed in detail. American officials are secretive about what they are doing both to monitor the activity and to find ways to recover quickly if cables are cut. But more than a dozen officials confirmed in broad terms that it had become the source of significant attention in the Pentagon. (Read more from “Russian Ships Near Data Cables Are Too Close for U.S. Comfort” HERE)

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