Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed that Russia is preparing for war after firing nearly 50 senior officers for refusing to confront NATO ships and warning that the world is “being pulled in an irreversible direction.”
The Baltic Fleet’s Commander, Vice Admiral Viktor Kravchuk, and his chief-of-staff, Rear Admiral Sergey Popov, were among the nearly 50 officerssacked by Putin over reportedly failing to aggressively confront NATO vessels in the Baltic Sea; last month, Kravchuk and Popov were suspendedby Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu for “serious shortcomings in organizing combat training, daily activities of their units, poor care of their subordinates as well as misrepresenting the real situation in their reports.”
“Some hint that the ‘buzzing’ of USS Donald Cook by Russian Su-24 fighter-bombers on April 14, 2016 was meant to be part of a broader series of Russian confrontations against Western ships in the Baltic,” said international affairs analyst Peter Coates, “but the Russian Baltic Fleet in April, however, refused to follow such dangerous orders — hence Putin’s retaliation against his own naval officers.”
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