President Vladimir Putin's high-profile jaunt on a nuclear submarine in the Arctic just weeks before elections turned sour Tuesday when the navy inexplicably failed to launch two intercontinental ballistic missiles as the Russian leader looked on.
Initial reports said a missile fell apart moments after its launch from a submarine the Barents Sea - the same location where the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in August 2000, claiming the lives of 118 seamen.
But the state RIA Novosti and private Interfax news agencies later quoted navy sources as saying that missiles were never actually launched by the two ICBM tests but the exercise was scrapped through an automatic shutdown relayed to them by satellite.
The Northern Fleet command later denied there had been any "unforeseen incident" but did not mention any ICBM launches that had been planned for the day.
The official Krasnaya Zvezda military newspaper quoted the commander in charge of sea launches as saying at least one ICBM was to be test-fired Tuesday morning and hit a prepared target in the Far Eastern coast of Kamchatka.
But the navy was clearly embarrassed by the snag in the presence of the Russian president and began to give a series of conflicting accounts - just as it initially tried to cover-up the gravity of the Kursk disaster. Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov told RIA Novosti the launch was supposed to be "virtual."
"This is when there is an electronic order to fire an ICBM but the missile itself never leaves its launch tube," Kuroyedov said.
The reported mishap - if confirmed - threatens to embarrass Putin less than a month before a March 14 presidential election that he is overwhelmingly expected to win.
Putin staged a similar military stunt on the eve of his March 2000 election by co-piloting a supersonic jet into Grozny, the war-ravaged capital of the separatist republic of Chechnya.
The incident's political sensitivity became apparent when the launch timed to coincide with Putin's mission to the Barents Sea - top news on all networks before the ICBM tests - was then completely ignored on state television.
The government Channel One channel focused on Putin shaking hands with navy commanders while making no mention of the ICBMs.
Putin was shown wearing navy gear Monday evening as he boarded the Arkhangelsk nuclear submarine and chatted amicably with the crew. He inspected the ship and dined with the sailors in televised footage certain to bolster his tough-guy image among voters ahead of the presidential vote.
Putin's approval rating is reported at up to 80 percent - a figure similar to that he brandished in 2000 when his drive to raise Russia's self-esteem through strong nationalist rhetoric helped him succeed Boris Yeltsin.
Russian military officials have repeatedly said on the eve of the war games that they were a regular test of the country's military readiness and not aimed as a show of force against the West.
The mishap apparently affected an RSM-53 missile (Nato specification SS-N-23) which was first developed by the Soviet Union in 1979.
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