• Originally published July 28, 2008 at 5:24 p.m., updated July 28, 2008 at 5:24 p.m.

Although no reliable sources could be established for the recent articles in a Russian newspaper, the possibility that Russia was contemplating deploying long-range bombers in Cuba raised the specter of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

The Izvestia reported that Russia was thinking about deploying the long-range bombers (Advocate, Sunday, July 27) to Cuba. A follow-up story by the same newspaper reported that Russia already had sent bomber crews to Cuba to do reconnaissance work.

According to a BBC News article from Oct. 26, 2007, Russian President Bladimir Putin compared U.S. plans for a missile shield in Europe (a missile defense system in the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic) to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

“Let me recall how relations shaped up in a similar situation in the mid-1960s … technologically, the situation is very similar,” Putin had said.

This is scary stuff, particularly when any comparison is made to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was “a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba,” according to wikipedia.com, and could have led to an all-out nuclear war.

The Crisis began when U.S. reconnaissance planes spotted missile bases being built in Cuba on Oct. 15, 1962. The Crisis ended Oct. 28, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy and United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached an agreement with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviets agreed “to dismantle the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a no-invasion agreement (of Cuba) and a secret removal of the Jupiter and Thor missiles in Turkey,” according to wikipedia.com.

The collision of superpowers during the Cold War was almost the catalyst for a nuclear war that the world had never known and hopefully never will.

Last Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry strongly denied the reports by the Russian newspaper Izvestia that long-range bombers might be sent to Cuba, and the Ministry called the reports false. Also, a Ministry spokesman, Alexander Dobryshevsky, called the claim that Russian crews were in Cuba a “fairy tale.”

Let’s hope the Russian newspaper erred and our U.S. intelligence personnel can verify the reports were bad journalism. We don’t need this kind of sabre-rattling. It’s too dangerous when there are thousands of bombs that could destroy the world one hundred times over.

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