In an address last week to military academy graduates, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Moscow will be ready to deploy the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which he previously called the world’s “most powerful” warhead, Fox News reported.
During his address to the new graduates last Wednesday, the Russian president acknowledged for the first time that Russian forces are facing difficult fighting in Ukraine.
He said officials with the military are currently reviewing the state of the ongoing war along with the military’s previous experience in other conflicts including Syria to analyze how to move forward with its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Putin acknowledged the resources the West has been sending to Ukraine throughout the war and outlined a series of plans he is considering to overhaul the war effort, including bolstering “the combat readiness” of the Russian “nuclear triad” that can be launched from land, sea, and air.
Putin boasted of Russia’s Avangard hypersonic warheads and vowed the country would continue to develop hypersonic missiles, the “unique characteristics” of which he claimed were “unmatched in the world.”
The Russian president also said that the RS-28 Sarmat, dubbed by Western officials as “Satan II,” would soon be ready for “combat duty,” but did not way when this would occur.
According to Reuters, the RS-28 Sarmat is designed to deliver a nuclear payload on targets thousands of miles away in Europe or the United States. However, the deployment of the “Satan II” is going much slower than expected, after the Kremlin initially said last April that it would be ready for combat by the fall of 2022.
Putin also told the graduates that the Admiral Gorschkov frigate would be rolling out for combat duty in early January 2024. The frigate will be equipped with sea-based hypersonic missiles, that are “without equal,” Putin said.
