“Three minutes, 20 seconds to Strasbourg”: Duma speaker threatens the EU with a nuclear missile that has yet to do what Putin expects of it.
Plesetsk – “It is a very problematic missile,” says Oleksandr Kovalenko. The analyst of the Information Resistance Group of Ukraine already described it to the media in March RBC Ukraine the RS-28 Sarmat (in English: Satan) intercontinental missile as unreliable and dangerous. Now it is said to have exploded in Vladimir Putin’s face. Not only was the latest test of Putin’s nuclear weapons a failure – his propaganda also tried to pin the blame on Ukraine. Without success.
Explosion at spaceport: Russia apparently loses an RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile
According to several media reports, an explosion has recently occurred at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. The site, known as the “spaceport”, is located in the Archangelsk administrative district in northwestern Russia and is used as a test site for intercontinental missiles. Satellite images around the explosion show, according to the magazine Defense Expressthat the launch of an RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental missile took place from a silo.
However, the test went catastrophically wrong and resulted in a massive explosion that left nothing but a crater at the site of the former launch pad, the magazine writes. Russian news agencies tried to sell the explosion as another success for Ukraine, writes Defense Express – according to this, another Russian ammunition depot was destroyed by drones, thus “an important source of supplies for the Russian invading army and reportedly one of the storage sites for artillery shells from North Korea,” as the magazine writes.
“If that happens, Russia will respond with tougher weapons. No one should have any illusions about that. The State Duma insists on it. The European Parliament’s actions are leading us towards a world war with nuclear weapons.”
“It only happens every 50 years”: Satellite images capture rocket explosion in Russia
However, satellite images then provided evidence of a failed missile test – an extremely rare event that should only occur every 50 years, as Defense Express The last comparable incident was the explosion during the first test launch of the Soviet R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile in October 1960 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
In the West, the Sarmat rocket is known as “Satan”
The Sarmat missile is also known in the West as Satan and is intended to replace the remaining Russian RS-20 and RS-SS-18 Satan intercontinental missiles, with which Russia wants to gradually modernize its nuclear forces, as Timothy Wright reports. The think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates that Russia has around 40 silo-based SS-18s – just like these, according to the IISS analyst, the successor will also carry up to ten independently targetable reentry missiles. Optimists assume that it will include up to 15 nuclear warheads.
The weapon is designed and produced separately by different companies, Wright reports. This is intended to enable design errors to be identified earlier – which apparently fails. The IISS reports two tests of the Sarmat in 2021, both of which were canceled. Wright cites several reasons for this, “including failed strength tests of the rocket, problems with the first stage engine, difficulties in equipping the Plesetsk Cosmodrome test site for test launches, and production delays due to significant personnel changes at the Krasmash rocket plant.”
However, the Sarmat program is merely a reflection of the entire struggling Russian industry, claims Maxim Starchak. The RS-28 should have been available to the troops by 2018. As the analyst from the Washington DC-based Carnegie Foundation wrote in October last year, however, this is still a long way off. However, as President Vladimir Putin is said to have said, mass production could now begin and the Russian super weapon could go into operation. Far from it.
Missile serves as nuclear deterrent
According to Starchak, the predecessor model SS-18 had set standards in terms of power and size since the mid-1990s and determined mutual nuclear deterrence between the blocs – the only problem that later turned out to be that this program had been manufactured in Ukraine, as Starchak explains. Russia then decided to overhaul the SS-18 in order to extend its service life; this became impossible due to growing tensions with Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Shortly before, however, the successor with the RS-28 had been decided and the first tests were planned for 2015, but then postponed again to 2017. In mid-2023, Yuri Borisov reported that the Sarmat should be in active service, announced the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. At the beginning of October 2023, Vladimir Putin corrected him: Although the model had successfully completed all the necessary tests, some administrative procedures still had to be completed before series production could start and the rocket could be handed over to the troops. Putin promised that this would happen in the near future, as Starchak reports.
And what is obviously still pending, as the currently failed test seems to prove. In February 2022, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientistsa US-based magazine for nuclear scientists, has extensively discussed the deployment of the intercontinental missile known within NATO as SS-X-29 or SS-X30. Satellite images also appear to have shown that the silos of the SS-18 had been partially emptied to make room for its successor.
“When the SS-X-29 replaces all current SS-18s, it will be installed in a total of 46 silos of the three regiments at the Dombarovsky missile field and the four regiments at the Uzhur missile field – six regiments with six missiles and one regiment with ten missiles. It looks like the first regiment to receive Sarmat could be the 302nd missile regiment,” the scientists wrote. This also seems to have yet to happen.
At the beginning of last year, Defense Express even compared the success of the two fraternal nations Russia and North Korea in terms of testing intercontinental missiles – North Korea had successfully completed five tests of its intercontinental models Hwasong-15 and Hwasong-17 missiles. Russia had only completed two tests at the time. North Korea may also have already integrated up to a dozen of its most advanced Hwasong-17 missiles into its troops and would therefore pose a far greater threat to the USA than Russia.
Carnegie analyst Starchak confirms this assumption with the number of intercontinental missile launches by Russia – which has actually fallen sharply over the past few years: Between 2013 and 2017, the Russian Federation carried out up to ten tests, he writes; between 2018 and 2022, the number has at least halved. For him, this indicates that President Putin is shifting the focus from the general expansion of his nuclear deterrent to stabilizing the flight characteristics of the Sarmat missile in particular.
Three minutes to Strasbourg: Russia threatens the West with nuclear war
This is currently underpinned by a renewed threat from Moscow, as the Kyiv Post reported. Due to the European Parliament’s demand to lift restrictions on the use of long-range weapons by Ukraine against Russian territory, a Duma deputy is said to have promptly lashed out at the West, as the post writes: According to this, Vyacheslav Volodin has recently warned Western governments that a nuclear war is imminent if they allow Kiev to attack targets deep inside Russia with long-range weapons supplied from the West.
“If that happens, Russia will respond with tougher weapons. No one should have any illusions about that. The State Duma insists on it,” he is reported to have said on his Telegramchannel; and added: “The actions of the European Parliament are leading us towards a world war with nuclear weapons.” For the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament and member of Putin’s Security Council, Russia’s flagship weapon plays a crucial role in this – he wants to directly attack the European Parliament at one of its seats, as he wrote.
“Sarmat will reach Strasbourg in just three minutes and 20 seconds.”
#Kremlin #cover #embarrassing #missile #launch #failure