On Tuesday, Russia conducted a test launch of its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, a long-planned step in the country’s nuclear modernization that drew a triumphant endorsement from President Vladimir Putin. Speaking after the test, Putin declared the missile “the most powerful missile in the world,” adding that the Sarmat’s individually targeted warheads deliver a combined explosive power more than four times greater than that of any Western counterpart.
The Sarmat, designated “Satan II” in the West, is built to replace roughly 40 Soviet-era Voyevoda missiles. According to Putin, the new missile will enter combat service by the end of this year. Its development began in 2011, but before Tuesday the program had a limited test record — only one known successful launch, and reports of a massive explosion during an abortive test in 2024.
Putin said the Sarmat matches the power of the Voyevoda but with higher precision. He claimed the missile’s suborbital flight capability gives it a range exceeding 35,000 kilometers (21,700 miles) and an extended capacity to penetrate any prospective missile defense. That language echoes a suite of new weapons Putin first unveiled in 2018, which he said would render U.S. missile defenses useless.
The test launch took place in a strategic environment transformed by the expiration of New START, the last remaining bilateral nuclear arms treaty between Russia and the United States. That pact lapsed in February, leaving no numerical caps on the world’s two largest atomic arsenals for the first time since the Cold War and fueling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.
Putin, who has repeatedly brandished Russia’s nuclear arsenal since ordering the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, linked the new weapon systems to the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and to develop a missile shield that Russian military planners view as a potential first-strike enabler. “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,” Putin said.
Beyond the Sarmat, Putin catalogued other advanced weapons Russia has fielded or is nearing completion on. The Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, capable of flying 27 times the speed of sound, has already entered service. The nuclear-capable Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, with a range sufficient to reach any target in Europe, has been used in its conventional variant to strike Ukraine on two occasions. Putin said Russia is in the “final stages” of developing the Poseidon underwater drone — designed to detonate near enemy coastlines and trigger radioactive tsunamis — and the Burevestnik cruise missile, which uses a miniature atomic reactor for propulsion, giving it virtually unlimited range and the ability to loiter and evade air defenses.
Putin’s endorsement of the Sarmat test came just days after he used a scaled-back Victory Day parade on Red Square to claim the war in Ukraine “is coming to an end.” The juxtaposition of a declared winding-down of the largest land war in Europe since World War II with a display of nuclear might continued a pattern Moscow has sustained throughout the conflict: using nuclear saber-rattling to warn the West against deepening its support for Ukraine.