Night after night, day after day, the madness unfolds on Russian state television: At first glance, the discussion rounds on the first channel, Rossiya 1, do not seem dissimilar to the talk shows on German television: Anne Will, Lanz or Maybritt Illner. But what the supposed experts on Russian state television are babbling about is aggressive war, nuclear annihilation, revenge. Even more disturbing than the topics is the tone that the guests strike: they laugh about the obliteration of a city of millions by a Russian nuclear missile. This just happened during a talk round on the occasion of a missile test.
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It is about the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which Russia plans to put into service from the fall, according to the announcement on Saturday. On Wednesday, Russia carried out a test launch of the ICBM at the Plessetzk spaceport in northern Russia. Against the background of the war against Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin used the rocket launch to threaten the West. The weapon can overcome all forms of anti-missile defenses and “makes people think twice who, in the fervor of hardened, aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country,” he said.
Russian intercontinental ballistic missile Satan 2 with nuclear warheads should be operational from autumn
It is now a matter of bringing the missile tests to a reasonable conclusion, regulating the ranges and then handing over the Sarmat (Nato code name: SS-X-30 Satan 2) to the military, said the head of the Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, in a television interview on Saturday. “We plan to do this no later than the fall,” he added.
The Sarmat has a range of 18,000 kilometers and can be equipped with nuclear warheads. This allows Russia to attack both the North and South Pole and reach targets worldwide. The first units are to be stationed in the Siberian Greater Krasnoyarsk District.
At the same time, the TV group on Russian state television joked: “The whole of New York would be gone – with a single missile, hehhhh…” The participants in the discussion found it particularly amusing that the USA does not have an equivalent missile in its arsenal. why? For decades, the strategy of nuclear deterrence has resulted in a stalemate: A nuclear war could not be won, and according to Russian military doctrine, the use of nuclear weapons is only a last step when all other defense options have been exhausted.
Russian threats of nuclear first strikes against the United States
However, Russia is increasingly undermining this consensus through the low-threshold use of weapons of mass destruction in wars: Chemical warfare agents have been used several times in Syria, and they may also have been used in Mariupol. At the beginning of the Ukraine war, Russia announced that it would increase the operational readiness of its weapons of mass destruction. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has now also brought up the possibility of a nuclear first strike against the United States. Russian state television plays the threats hinted at by Putin as realistic or even desirable scenarios.
The primary target of Russian state television is its own population, which has difficulty obtaining independent information about the Ukraine war after critical media in Russia were shut down and foreign media and social networks are virtually unavailable. Nevertheless, observers assume that word has gotten around that Russia is waging a war of aggression in Ukraine. State television swears to viewers that this war is one against the West as a whole, against which the Russian people are now fighting with all means, even with nuclear missiles that are reducing cities like New York to rubble.
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