Russia Test Fires ‘Satan 2’ Missile Amid Ukraine War, Message to West
Moscow has been updating its ballistic capability
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Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday the successful test launch of its new Sarmat superheavy Intercontinental Ballistic Missile that can reportedly deploy 10 or more nuclear warheads on each missile.
CNN, citing “Western experts,” tried to feed Americans propaganda. The report said these “experts” portrayed the test as "nuclear saber-rattling," saying the threat to the US or its allies was "extremely low" and suggesting Putin's real motivation was to distract his domestic audience from Russia's recent military failures, such as the sinking of its Black Sea flagship the Moskva.
Putin used the launch as a warning for “external threats and provide food for thought for those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, try to threaten our country,” Reuters reported. Western analysts have called the missile “Satan 2.” The design is intended to evade anti-missile systems and can reportedly hit any target on earth.
PUTIN EXPRESSED INTEREST IN JOINING NATO IN 2000
The missile was called the world’s most powerful and with the longest range. The missile was launched from Plesetsk cosmodrome, in Russia’s northwest, and traveled about 3,2000 miles to the Kamchatka peninsula.
In 2018, Putin said the Sarmat would render even to most advanced missile systems useless. “No kind of, not even future missile defense systems will offer any trouble to the Russian rocket complex, Sarmat.”
The Heritage Foundation’s 2021 Index of U.S. Military Strength said “Russia remains the primary threat to American interests in Europe and is the most pressing threat to the United States,” describing Russia as “aggressive in its behavior and formidable in its growing capabilities.”
SEE: “NO NEED FOR NATO”
Congressional Research Service wrote on 21 March 2022: “Relations between the United States and Russia have shifted over time—sometimes reassuring and sometimes concerning—yet most experts agree that Russia is the only nation that poses, through its arsenal of nuclear weapons, an existential threat to the United States.”
SARMAT FACTS
Reports indicate that the next-generation Sarmat can carry up to 15 warheads, along with penetration aids, and potentially several Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles.
Russia began testing the Sarmat missile in 2016.
Putin noted that Sarmat could attack targets by flying over both the North and South Poles, evading detection by radars seeking missiles flying in an expected trajectory over the North Pole.
Sarmat could carry a payload capable of wiping out a landmass "the size of Texas or France," according to a report by the Kremlin-aligned Sputnik news agency. -CNBC
Putin warned the West at the beginning of the Ukraine War that countries that try to intervene would see consequences “the likes of which you have never seen in history.”
On 27 February, three days after the invasion, Putin said during a meeting with defense officials, “Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly economic actions against our country, but leaders of major NATO countries are making aggressive statements about our country. So, I order to move Russia’s deterrence forces to a special regime of combat duty.”
Igor Korotchenko, editor in chief of Russia's National Defence magazine, told RIA news agency it was a signal to the West that Moscow was capable of meting out "crushing retribution that will put an end to the history of any country that has encroached on the security of Russia and its people". -Newsbreak
TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal is completely opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, but—as we have long pointed out—it does not come as a surprise since Moscow views Kyiv’s partnership with the U.S. and NATO as an existential threat.
But we have been calling for Kyiv to sit down and negotiate for peace. Russia has already identified its demands.
Its top demand is that Ukraine agrees to take a neutral stance and will not apply for NATO membership. Zelensky has already agreed to this requirement.
The BBC reported that Kyiv would also have to disarm, would have to deNazify, and must protect the Russian language in the eastern region of the country.
Russia has pulled its troops from Kyiv to focus on its offensive in the east.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian negotiator, told Reuters that there will be no meeting with Putin until “after the country defeated Russia in the east, which would bolster its negotiating position.”
Zelensky recently told Fox News that his country would not accept “any outcome” short of the defeat of the Russian invaders.
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