While Trump began piling pressure on Russia after Putin’s reluctance to engage in peace talks, the latter turbo-boosted his defiance with nuclear weapons.
Russia has successfully tested its nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, a nuclear-capable weapon Moscow says can evade any defence system, and will move towards deploying the weapon, President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday(26 October).
Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of Russia’s armed forces, told Putin that the missile travelled 14,000 km (8,700 miles) and was in the air for about 15 hours when it was tested on October 21.
Russia says the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel) – dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by NATO – is “invincible” to current and future missile defences, with an almost unlimited range and unpredictable flight path.
“It is a unique ware which nobody else in the world has,” Putin, dressed in camouflage fatigues at a command point meeting with generals overseeing the war in Ukraine, said in remarks released by the Kremlin on Sunday.
Putin said that he had once been told by some Russian specialists that the weapon was unlikely to ever be possible, but now, he said, its “crucial testing” had been concluded.
He told Gerasimov that Russia needed to understand how to class the weapon and prepare infrastructure for deploying the Burevestnik.
Gerasimov said that the missile had flown on nuclear power and that this test had been different because it flew for such a long distance, though the range was essentially unlimited. He said it could defeat any anti-missile defences. Putin on Wednesday oversaw a test of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces on land, sea and air to rehearse their readiness and command structure.
“The so-called modernity of our nuclear deterrent forces is at the highest level,” Putin said, higher than any other nuclear power.
Russia and the United States together have about 87% of the global inventory of nuclear weapons – enough to destroy the world many times over. Russia has 5,459 nuclear warheads while the United States has 5,177, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
“The strategic forces are capable of ensuring the national security of the Russian Federation and the Union State in full,” Putin said.
While Trump began piling pressure on Russia after Putin’s reluctance to engage in peace talks, the latter turbo-boosted his defiance with nuclear weapons.
What is the Burevestnik?
Russian military expert Alexei Leonkov wrote in 2019 that the role of Burevestniks would be to eliminate the “remnants” of the enemy’s command posts, military bases, factories and power plants after Russia had already fired intercontinental ballistic missiles, by which point the opponent’s air-defence systems would be incapable of stopping them. He said Burevestniks would “trample the aggressor countries into the Stone Age”, completing the destruction of their military and civilian infrastructure.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies, quoting a specialist Russian military journal in 2021, said the Burevestnik would have a notional range of up to 20,000 km (12,400 miles), so could be based anywhere in Russia and strike targets in the United States.
The same Russian journal said the notional altitude of the missile was just 50 to 100 metres, much lower than a conventionally powered cruise missile, which would make it harder for air-defence radar to detect.
A 2020 report by the United States Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center said that if Russia successfully brought the Burevestnik into service, it would give Moscow a “unique weapon with intercontinental-range capability”.
Experts assess that it would be sent aloft by a small solid-fuel rocket to drive air into an engine containing a miniature nuclear reactor. Superheated and possibly radioactive air would be blasted out, providing forward thrust.
The Burevestnik has a poor test record with numerous past failures, according to Western experts. In 2019 at least five Russian nuclear specialists were killed in an explosion and release of radiation during an experiment in the White Sea, and U.S. intelligence sources said they suspected it was part of a test of the Burevestnik. Putin presented their widows with top state awards, saying the weapon they were developing was without equal in the world, although he did not name it. Putin announced a successful test of the missile in October 2023.
Two U.S. researchers said in 2024 that they had identified the probable deployment site for the missile, alongside a nuclear warhead storage facility called Vologda-20 or Chebsara. The site is 475 km north of Moscow.