Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russia has conducted a “last successful test” of a Burevestnik nuclear-tipped missile, the BBC reported.
The president’s comments came after his spokesman denied an op-ed in the New York Times that said the weapon test was yet to take place.
The experimental weapon, first announced in 2018, was hailed as having potentially unlimited range.
Little is officially known about its capabilities, with reports of previous tests failing over time.
What the Russian president said has not yet been confirmed by anyone, not even by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
However, satellite images released last month showed that Russia had recently built new facilities on a remote Arctic island where Soviet nuclear tests had previously been conducted.
The photos showed construction work on Novaya Zemlya, an island archipelago in the northern part of the Barents Sea.
“We have almost finished work on the modern types of strategic weapons that I talked about and announced a few years ago. The last successful test of the Burevestnik – a nuclear-powered missile with a global reach – was carried out,” Putin said at a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in Thursday, which was broadcast live on state television.
The missile, code-named Skyfall by NATO, is believed to be powered by a nuclear reactor that must be activated after the solid-fuel rockets launch it into the air.
The New York Times quoted an arms control group, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, as saying all 13 previous known tests of the system between 2017 and 2019 had failed.
Putin told his audience that work on an intercontinental ballistic missile, called the Sarmat, was almost complete.
Putin stressed that Russia has no plans to change its nuclear doctrine, the policy that defines the circumstances under which its forces can use nuclear weapons.
He added that the existence of the Russian state was not threatened and “no person with common sense and a clear memory” would consider a nuclear strike against it.
2023-10-05 19:37:07
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