Putin’s Satan II missile ‘blows up during launch

The ‘super-weapon’ RS-28 Sarmat, an intercontinental ballistic missile known in the West as Satan II has blown up in its silo during a test launch.

The RS-28 Sarmat, known in the West as Satan II.

A Russian intercontinental ballistic missile that President Putin once called unstoppable has blown up in its silo during a test launch, satellite images indicate.

The RS-28 Sarmat, known in the West as Satan II, was one of several “superweapons’ unveiled by Putin in 2018. Moscow said it had carried out a successful test launch in April 2022, weeks after the Kremlin invaded Ukraine.

However, although the nuclear-capable missile was reported last year to have been put into service, it has since been plagued by failures, analysts say. Satellite images from the Maxar Technologies company that were shared by analysts showed a crater about 60m wide at the launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.

There was also damage in the area that had not been visible in previous images, as well as what appeared to be a large fire close to the launch pad. The missile, which was not armed with a nuclear warhead, was expected to fly across the Arctic towards a testing ground in Kamchatka, in the far east of Russia.

“By all indications, it was a failed test. It’s a big hole in the ground,” Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russia’s nuclear forces, told Reuters. “There was a serious incident with the missile and the silo.”

The Sarmat has a range of 11,000 miles and can carry up to 16 nuclear warheads, according to Russian state media. After it was tested in 2022, Putin said it would “provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country”.

Analysts said it was not clear whether the Sarmat had failed during a launch or there had been an accident during defuelling. However, the incident will be an embarrassment to Moscow, which has warned that western support for Ukraine could provoke a nuclear response. The Kremlin declined to comment on the satellite images.

President Zelensky of Ukraine has arrived in the United States to present his “victory plan” to President Biden, as well as to Biden’s potential successors, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Ukraine is pressing its American and European allies for permission to use western long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia.

The Kremlin has said there can be no peace in Ukraine until Kyiv surrenders Crimea and four other regions that Putin says belong to Russia. Moscow is also demanding that Ukraine formally renounces its ambition to join Nato.

The Russian foreign ministry said at the weekend that Moscow would refuse any invitations to a new peace summit organised by Ukraine because it did not believe that Kyiv and the West wanted peace. Russian officials were not invited to a summit in Switzerland in June, but Zelensky has said that they can attend a new round of talks.

The Times