20 November 2023 , 15:01
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Vladimir Putin is to test the world’s biggest ballistic missile - Satan-2 - by flying it over the South Pole, revealed a shocking report by Russian state media which was rapidly censored.
The dictator is determined to flex his nuclear muscle to the West and will put his first regiment to be armed with the apocalypse 208-ton intercontinental nuclear weapon on “combat duty” next month. This is despite an astonishing admission that the “unstoppable” 15,880mph doomsday missile system - the size of a 14-storey tower block, and known as Sarmat in Russia - is not properly tested.
Putin’s own state news agency TASS reported that “even a truncated LCI [flight development tests], and assuming all launches are successful, would require several more launches, including via the South Pole”.
The Sarmat ICBM launch in April 2022 (kremlin.ru/ East2west News)This claim over the South Pole was hastily censored from the report but remains in cached versions. It is likely to trigger deep alarm in the West as Putin prepares to deploy a rocket designed to be his ultimate nuclear strike weapon against NATO countries, yet one which appears to have so far had only one successful flight test across Russia.
“The first Sarmat regiment, consisting of a command post and several silo launchers will go on combat duty as part of the Uzhur missile formation of the Strategic Missile Forces in December of this year,” a defence source also told Russian state news agency TASS in part of the story that was not redacted. The regiment is already on “experimental combat duty” in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, said another source.
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Vladimir Putin during an awards ceremony at the Novo-Ogaryovo State Residence on November 15 (Getty Images)Yet the first source admitted tests of the Putin fifth generation missile are behind schedule and “have not yet been completed”, an embarrassment for the autocrat. Only one fully confirmed successful test is known - in April 2022. Now “development tests of the missile will continue” even as its command post and launch silos are put on “combat duty” in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.
TASS reported: “The Sarmat flight tests are currently being carried out from the Plesetsk spaceport to the Kura training ground in Kamchatka.” But ultimately Putin will need to test his new nuclear toy by flying it over the South Pole, the story suggested before it was censored. The monster hypersonic missile is designed to strike the West by flying over the North or South Poles, making it impossible to strike down by air defences.
Defence minister Sergei Shoigu said last month that the Makeyev missile design bureau in Miass was “solving the task of equipping the first missile regiment with the Sarmat complex at the main facility of the Strategic Missile Forces”. He inspected the production line.
Putin last month insisted that his designers had “finished work” on the Sarmat “super heavy missile”. Already more than a year behind schedule, he said: “We just need to finish some of the procedures in a purely administrative and bureaucratic way, and move on to mass production and put them on combat duty,” said Putin. “And we will do this in the near future.” Eleven months ago he said much the same.
“In the near future, Sarmat ICBMs will be put on combat duty for the first time,” he said at the time. “We know there will be a certain delay in time but this does not change our plans.”
The Sarmat-Satan-2 complex is due to replace the Voevoda - or Satan - missile which has been in service since the 1980s. R-36M2 Voevoda missile was tested no less than 17 times in the Cold War before it was put on combat duty. So far only one Sarmat-Satan-2 test is confirmed yet Putin evidently intends to send it over the pristine South Pole.