Putin tests feared Satan II missile and calls it ‘most powerful in the world’

Russia successfully test-launched ‘the most powerful missile in the world’, Vladimir Putin said yesterday.

The Sarmat is an intercontinental ballistic missile that the Kremlin says can deploy nuclear warheads five times as fast as the speed of sound.

The Russian president said the hefty missile, called ‘Satan II’ in the West, will enter combat service at the end of the year.

‘We were forced to consider ensuring our strategic security in the face of the new reality and the need to maintain a strategic balance of power and parity,’ he added.

The Satan II has a range of more than 21,700 miles, according to the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency.

Colonel-General Sergei Karakayev said the missile was tested at 11.15am local time yesterday at a military range.

‘The launch was successful, and the mission was accomplished,’ he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

The missile will be first used in Krasnoyarsk, about 2,000 miles east of Moscow, Karakayev said.

Russian defence analysts were similarly overjoyed by the launch, with one telling the Russian-owned TASS news agency that it gives Moscow the power to ‘put an end’ to its enemies.

Though, only if said enemy is trying to launch ‘a nuclear missile attack on Russia or begins full-scale military operations against our country’, said Igor Korotchenko, the director of the Center for Analysis of the World Arms Trade.

This successful test was a long time coming for Putin, who first unveiled the fast-flying Sarmat to great fanfare in 2018.

He claimed the ‘invisible’ missile can easily outsmart American missile defences, a notion that experts at the time shrugged off as bluffing.

Speaking at his State of the Union address, Putin showed a video of the Sarmat soaring over a mountain range, zigzagging around the Atlantic before heading towards the west coast of the US.

Putin added: ‘We would consider any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies to be a nuclear attack on our country.’

In 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed the missile had been successfully tested, the first step in building a ‘shield’ around Russia.

Vladimir Degtyar, general designer of JSC Makeyev State Rocket Center, which builds the Sarmat, said: ‘The Sarmat will strengthen the combat potential of the Armed Forces over the next 40-50 years, reliably ensuring Russia’s security from external threats.

‘And in today’s geopolitical conditions, it is our reliable shield, the main factor of nuclear deterrence, and a guarantee of maintaining peace.’

Yet the missile’s roll-out has been held back by less successful launches.

One test launch in 2024 ended with it exploding in its silo, leaving a 200-foot-wide crater in northwestern Russia.

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