RUSSIA TO DEPLOY NEW NUCLEAR MISSILES
President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia’s new generation of Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are capable of carrying 10 or more nuclear warheads, would soon be deployed on combat duty.
In a speech to new graduates of military academies, Putin stressed the importance of Russia’s “triad” of nuclear forces that can be launched from land, sea or air. “The most important task here is the development of the nuclear triad, which is a key guarantee of Russia’s military security and global stability,” he said.
“Already about half of the units and formations of the Strategic Missile Forces are equipped with the latest Yars systems, and the troops are being re-equipped with modern missile systems with the Avangard hypersonic warhead.”
The new Sarmat missile is designed to carry out nuclear strikes on targets thousands of missiles away in the US or Europe. But its deployment has proceeded slower than planned, as Russia had said in April 2022 that it would be in place by autumn of that year.
Dmitry Rogozin, then head of Russia’s space agency, said at that time that the missiles would be deployed with a unit in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, about 3,000km east of Moscow.
Rogozin said they would be placed at the same sites and in the same silos as the Soviet-era Voyevoda missiles they are replacing, hailing the new “super-weapon” as an historic event that would guarantee the security of Russia’s children and grandchildren for the next 30-40 years.