Putin boasts devastating Satan 2 nuclear missile can ‘break through any defences’ and will be ready to strike in months
TYRANT Putin has boasted that his apocalyptic 'Satan 2' nuke missile can "break through any defences" as he revelled in the prospect of global destruction.
In a mortifying threat, Mad Vlad, 69, said the world-ending RS-28 Sarmat missile will "force those who try to threaten Russia to think twice".
The deadly projectile can fly over 11,000 miles, carry 15 warheads and has the potential to destroy an area the size of the United Kingdom in a single strike.
Putin hailed the development of the new missile - successfully test-fired earlier this week - as "a big, significant event" for Russia's defence industry.
Speaking yesterday, the dictator boasted: "The missile can break through all modern anti-missile defences.
"There is nothing like this anywhere in the world, and won't be for a long time."
READ MORE PUTIN STORIES
He went on, gloating how the Sarmat will "ensure Russia's security from external threats and make those who try to threaten our country with aggressive rhetoric think twice."
Russia's defence ministry echoed Putin as they also bragged that the Sarmat ICBM is able to overcome any missile defence systems.
"Thanks to the energy-mass characteristics of the missile, the range of its combat equipment has fundamentally expanded both in terms of the number of warheads and types, including hypersonic gliders," the ministry said in a statement.
The missile is said to be the world's longest-range intercontinental ballistic missile.
Most read in The Sun
It's range of over 11,000 miles means it could easily strike targets in the US.
Russia successfully test-launched the missile on Wednesday with video showing the enormous 115-foot missile being launched from an underground silo, triggering an enormous fireball.
It travelled almost the entire length of Russia - almost 3,600 miles - in around 15 minutes as a watching President Putin grinned with glee.
The missile then landed at Kura Missile Test Range on the Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east of the country, according to Russian defence sources.
The separate warheads in the Satan 2 missile are capable of detaching from the main 100-tonne missile before travelling towards their target at hypersonic speeds.
The bombs are 1,000 times more powerful than those dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War Two.
It seems like there's very little that would stop him, particularly when he makes those kinds of threats
Philip Reeker, interim US ambassador to the UK
Just one of them contains eight megatons of TNT-equivalent explosive power.
Officials said the RS-28 Sarmat has the capability to use trajectories and unpredictable routes that “substantially impede their destruction even by advanced missile defence systems”, according to the Kremlin.
It comes as Russia gears up to deploy the devastating missile by this autumn, the country's military has claimed.
Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Roscosmos space agency, said a unit is to be deployed to Uzhur, around 1,800 miles east of Moscow, with the Satan-2 later this year, according to the state-run Tass news agency.
Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Russia's option of firing it over either of the Earth's poles could pose as an obstacle to ground and satellite-based radar and tracking systems, reported.
But the military expert said the proposed timeline to deploy by the end of the year is ambitious.
He believes more testing will be needed before Russia is able to deploy the catastrophic weapon.
'TERRIBLE BLUNDER'
A growing band of Kremlin insiders fear their Russian leader will resort to nuclear weapons to defeat Ukraine and halt a palace coup, reports say.
Some elite members in Moscow are also questioning President Putin’s invasion of its neighbour and its economic and political impact.
Putin’s critics are spread across senior positions in government and state-run business, according to who cited ten sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
His opponents believe the war against Ukraine has been a terrible blunder and will set Russia back decades.
During an interview on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov didn’t give a direct answer to repeated questions on whether Russia might use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
The interim US ambassador to the UK, Philip Reeker, told : “Well, as our director of Central Intelligence, Bill Burns, said in open testimony last week, this is something we have to be concerned about.
"Putin himself has raised this. So certainly it's something we have to watch very closely, the kind of brutality that Putin has enacted - we've seen it before, but it's hard to imagine what he's doing.
"And it seems like there's very little that would stop him, particularly when he makes those kinds of threats."
NUKE LAUNCH
The former British ambassador to Ukraine, Leigh Turner said: “If Russia is visibly losing this war, it could be that Putin would authorise their use."
It comes as a new report shows that Britain repeatedly knocked back Ukrainian requests for military hardware since 2014.
The report, published by , claims consecutive Brit PMs since David Cameron feared arming Ukraine would provoke Russia.
That policy was overturned just weeks before Russia invaded its neighbour in February this year.
Boris Johnson has said that the UK was looking at sending tanks to support Poland as it supplies Ukraine with heavy weaponry.
The prime minister made the embassy announcement at a news conference in Delhi, where he was holding talks with Indian leader Narendra Modi.
Gen Sir Chris Deverell, former commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command, has said: "I don’t think it’s a crazy idea."
Western fears of what Putin may do next come amid mounting rumours of his failing health.
On Friday he was seen biting his lips, fidgeting distractedly and appearing unsteady at a church service.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Read More on The Sun
The tyrant - dogged by claims he has Parkinson's or terminal cancer - gurned while clutching a candle near the altar at a midnight mass for Orthodox Easter.
It came days after dishevelled Putin, 69, was seen gripping a table and tapping his foot in video that Kremlin watchers claimed showed a drastic decline in his physical state.
