Russia: Putin Claims Successful Test of Nuclear-Powered ‘Global-Range’ Cruise Missile for 1st Time
Each year, Russian President Vladimir Putin uses the occasion of the Valdai Discussion Club hosted in Sochi to present on a wide range of foreign policy issues in an off the cuff manner, which most often comes out in Q&A format. He did the same Thursday at this year’s Valdai event, and one of the statements which is grabbing the attention of Western officials was related to testing nuclear weapons, at a sensitive moment where the last nuclear weapons treaty with Washington is set to fail.
“I think no person of sound mind and clear memory would think of using nuclear weapons against Russia,” Putin began in that segment of a speech before Russian foreign policy officials. That’s when he made a statement being widely perceived as signaling openness to resumption of nuclear testing:
“I hear calls to start testing nuclear weapons, to return to testing,” he added. “I am not ready to say whether we really need to conduct tests or not.”
He also raised eyebrows in immediately touting completed work on the Burevestnik cruise missile and the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, with the former being identified as a nuclear-powered cruise missile.
“We conducted the last successful test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered global-range cruise missile,” he said. This weapon hasn’t been publicly mentioned by Putin since 2018, and suddenly he’s revealed it’s been successfully tested.
Code-named Skyfall by NATO, the consensus among Western analysts has long been that the technology is likely too hard to achieve given unreliability and volatility of such a nuclear propulsion engine. On the deep significance of the ‘threat’ to possibly put the Burevestnik on combat readiness, Mario Nawfal comments:
Putin also declined to rule out the possibility it could carry out weapons tests involving nuclear explosions for the first time in more than three decades. Today, Putin warned the West of a ‘response’ to the pressure, and his willingness to ‘end the war’:
“There is permanently increasing military and political pressure [from the West]. We have to respond. I have said many times that it was not us who started the war in Ukraine. On the contrary, we are trying to end it.”
“The West has lost the sense of reality. Ukrainian conflict is not about territories. The issue is about global order.” Zelensky warned Europe that if Ukraine loses, Russia will attack other counties as well. Is Russia posturing again, as we’ve seen in the past, or is this not a bluff?
Other interesting moments from Putin’s words before Valdai are as follows…
Putin: Not against Ukraine’s EU aspirations, but categorically against NATO membership.
⚡️Putin: “We have never spoken negatively about Ukraine’s accession to the EU, but we are categorically against its accession to NATO” pic.twitter.com/oBbGg4Nhek
— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) October 5, 2023
