Putin tests feared Devil II missile and calls it ‘strongest on this planet’ | News World

Russia successfully test-launched ‘probably the most powerful missile on this planet’, Vladimir Putin said yesterday.

The Sarmat is an intercontinental ballistic missile that the Kremlin says can deploy nuclear warheads five times as fast because the speed of sound.

The Russian president said the hefty missile, called ‘Devil II’ within the West, will enter combat service at the tip of the 12 months.

‘We were forced to think about ensuring our strategic security within the face of the brand new reality and the necessity to keep up a strategic balance of power and parity,’ he added.

The Devil II has a variety of greater than 21,700 miles, in keeping with the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency.

Colonel-General Sergei Karakayev said the missile was tested at 11.15am local time yesterday at a military range.

‘The launch was successful, and the mission was achieved,’ he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

The missile shall be first utilized in Krasnoyarsk, about 2,000 miles east of Moscow, Karakayev said.

Russian defence analysts were similarly overjoyed by the launch, with one telling the Russian-owned TASS news agency that it gives Moscow the ability to ‘put an end’ to its enemies.

Though, provided that said enemy is attempting to launch ‘a nuclear missile attack on Russia or begins full-scale military operations against our country’, said Igor Korotchenko, the director of the Center for Evaluation of the World Arms Trade.

This successful test was a protracted time coming for Putin, who first unveiled the fast-flying Sarmat to great fanfare in 2018.

He claimed the ‘invisible’ missile can easily outsmart American missile defences, a notion that experts on the time shrugged off as bluffing.

Speaking at his State of the Union address, Putin showed a video of the Sarmat soaring over a mountain range, zigzagging across the Atlantic before heading towards the west coast of the US.

Putin added: ‘We might consider any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies to be a nuclear attack on our country.’

In 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed the missile had been successfully tested, step one in constructing a ‘shield’ around Russia.

Vladimir Degtyar, general designer of JSC Makeyev State Rocket Center, which builds the Sarmat, said: ‘The Sarmat will strengthen the combat potential of the Armed Forces over the following 40-50 years, reliably ensuring Russia’s security from external threats.

‘And in today’s geopolitical conditions, it’s our reliable shield, the important factor of nuclear deterrence, and a guarantee of maintaining peace.’

Yet the missile’s roll-out has been held back by less successful launches.

One test launch in 2024 ended with it exploding in its silo, leaving a 200-foot-wide crater in northwestern Russia.

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