“They know we have a nuclear submarine, the best in the world, right off their coast. So we don't need a rocket that flies 8,000. miles (12.9 km). They don't play with us, and neither do we. We are still conducting missile tests, but, as I said, we have a nuclear submarine, we do not need to shoot at such distances, noted the head of the White House.
He added that he considers Putin's boasting of new weapons “inappropriate.” — He should end the war, which was supposed to last a week and has been going on for four years now. That's what he should be doing, not missile tests, the US president said.
On October 26, Putin announced that Russia had completed “decisive tests” of the Burevestnik cruise missile with unlimited range and was starting work on its implementation into the armed forces.
– This is a unique product that no one else has in the world – he noted.
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What tests has Russia completed?
What did Trump say about the submarine?
What are the capabilities of the Burevestnik missile?
When did previous missile tests take place?
Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Valery Gerasimov announced that the missile covered a distance of 14,000. km in about 15 hours and this is not the peak of its capabilities. He added that the technical parameters of the new weapon allow it to be used “with guaranteed accuracy against objects with a high degree of protection at any distance.”
Later, Putin's special representative Kirill Dmitriev, who was recently on a visit to the US, stated that information about the tests of new weapons “is provided directly to the leadership and key people in the administration of the American president.”
Many years of trials
Burevestnik, referred to in NATO code as Skyfall, was developed by Russia more than a decade ago. It is a low-flying, ground-launched cruise missile powered by a small nuclear reactor integrated with its engine, which theoretically allows it to remain airborne for days.
According to a 2019 report by the Washington Nuclear Threat Initiative, Skyfall is capable of “circling the globe at low altitude, bypassing missile defense systems, and then dropping a nuclear warhead at a difficult to predict location.”
Putin presented these weapons as a response to US actions to create an anti-missile shield after Washington unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Treaty on the Limitation of Missile Defense Systems (called the ABM Treaty) in 2001, as well as from NATO expansion. On Sunday, Putin said that Russian specialists had previously told him that the creation of such a missile in the “near term” was unlikely, but now it is allegedly ready.
If you believe his words, Russia needed 15 attempts. Putin first mentioned work on Burevestnik in 2018 during a speech before the Federal Assembly. According to data from Western intelligence services, there were at least 13 attempts to launch the missile between 2017 and 2019, but only two attempts were partially successful, and one resulted in a tragedy. In 2019, a missile crashed in the Barents Sea. During its extraction, an explosion occurred, killing seven people, including scientists from the nuclear center in Sarov. The radiation cloud resulting from the accident covered Severodvinsk and reached the Scandinavian countries.
The last known Burevestnik test took place in 2023. Then Putin also spoke of success, noting that work on the missile was “virtually completed.”
