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Russia has opened another front in its international show of muscle by dispatching two strategic bombers to the heart of American military power in the Pacific for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
The 3200m flight to Guam, where more than 22,000 American troops are involved in exercises off the island, was carried out by two Russian Tu-95 bombers, a senior air force general said.
Major General Pavel Androsov said when US jets were scrambled, the Russian and American pilots "exchanged smiles".
"Whenever we saw US planes during our flights over the ocean, we greeted them," he said. "We renewed the tradition when our young pilots flew by Guam in two planes.
"We exchanged smiles with our counterparts, who flew up from a US carrier and returned home."
The sortie by the long-range bombers was part of war games being staged in the Russian Far East.
While western analysts play down talk of a new Cold War, Lieutenant-General Igor Khvorov, air forces chief of staff, said the West would have to come to terms with Russia asserting its geopolitical presence. "I don't see anything unusual, this is business as usual," he said, referring to the flight.
Meanwhile, Georgia is demanding an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over what Tbilisi called an "act of aggression", in which a Russian fighter jet violated and fired a rocket into its territory.
Russia denies having any aircraft in the area and accused the Georgians of firing the missile against themselves.
The spat intensified as General Yuri Baluyevsky, the head of Russia's military General Staff, said Georgia had dreamed up the incident to foment tensions with Russia.
"I'm convinced it was a provocation by Georgia. This is a provocation against the Russian peacekeepers. This was a provocation against Russia as a whole," he said.
A Georgian official dismissed Baluyevsky's comment as "sheer nonsense".
- Independent
Show of muscle
The Guam incident was the third symbolic event within a week, during which a resurgent Russia has been on display.
First came the flag planted on the Arctic ocean bed in support of Russian territorial claims. "The Cold War has come to the North," read the headline in the Russian newspaper Kommersant, after Canada and other countries with claims to the Arctic mineral wealth stepped up their own preparations.
That was followed by the former Soviet republic of Georgia accusing a Russian fighter jet of violating its airspace and firing a missile on to its territory, just outside South Ossetia.
