There Russia said its newest nuclear weapons system, the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, is now operational, as CNN reports. The start of hostilities was planned for the end of 2022. “The Sarmat strategic complex has been adopted into combat operations,” Yuri Borisov, general director of the state space company Roscosmos, said in a media interview on Friday.
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According to CNN, the Sarmat will replace the Soviet-era Voevoda missiles, known by the NATO designation SS-18 “Satan,” in Russia’s strategic arsenal. As the successor to the SS-18, the Sarmat was nicknamed “Satan II” in the West.
Last April, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Sarmat was capable of carrying multiple nuclear bombs to the American mainland and that it would “think about those who want to threaten Russia.” At the time, Western analysts told CNN that the Satan II posed an “extremely low” threat to the United States and its allies and that Putin’s public testing of the weapon may have served to cover up the company’s military shortcomings. Russia in the conflict in Ukraine.
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According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ missile defense project, the Sarmat could carry ten and possibly more independently targeted nuclear bombs with a range of up to 18,000 kilometers (or about 11,185 miles), CNN reports. It is expected to replace the Voevoda missiles. The Satan II was compared to a “facelift” for the Soviet-era SS-18 by Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, although he acknowledged there are “probably some improvements.”
Moscow: Drone attempting to hit Crimean bridge destroyed
Russia says it repelled a naval drone attack on the Crimean bridge. “The Ukrainian naval drone was detected and destroyed in time in the waters of the Black Sea,” the Moscow Defense Ministry said late Friday on its Telegram channel. According to the statement, the attack occurred late Friday evening. The information could not be independently verified.
Russia has been waging a war against Ukraine for about 18 months. The recapture of the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, is an important goal of Ukrainian national defense.
The bridge connecting mainland Russia with Crimea is important for supplying the peninsula and Russian troops in southern Ukraine. The bridge was then attacked several times by Kiev.
Satellite images show that Russia has protected part of the bridge with a barrier of sunken ships. According to observers, this is a protection against possible Ukrainian attacks with naval drones.