Vladimir Putin has staged a show of nuclear strength amid Donald Trump’s re-election as he rolled out a terrifying Yars intercontinental ballistic missile.
Footage released by the Russian defence ministry shows a 19,000 mph missile being transported on a special loading unit in the Kaluga region.
Yars missiles have a range of up to 7,500 miles, enabling strikes on the US as well as Europe.
They are currently the main element of the ground-based component of the Russian strategic nuclear force.
The latest drills follow Trump’s re-election amid deep strains in relations between Russia and the NATO countries over Putin’s continuing war against Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has staged a show of nuclear strength amid Donald Trump’s re-election as he rolled out a terrifying Yars intercontinental ballistic missile
Footage released by the Russian defence ministry shows a 19,000 mph missile being transported on a special loading unit
Yars missiles have a range of up to 7,500 miles, enabling strikes on the US as well as Europe
While there was an assumption that Moscow preferred Trump to his opponent Kamala Harris, Putin has not officially congratulated the US president-elect.
On Wednesday, Putin’s spokesman said of the US:
‘Let us not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country that is both directly and indirectly involved in a war against our nation.’
It also comes a week after Putin staged a mock nuclear war when he launched scores of missiles capable of unleashing a ‘massive’ strike in a stark warning to the West.
The major new exercises spanned Russia, with Yars missile launches from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwest to the Kura test range in Kamchatka in the far east.
Defence Minister Andrei Belousov warned the West that the exercise was to show how Russia could deliver ‘a massive nuclear strike by strategic offensive forces in response to a nuclear strike by the enemy’.
The Kremlin also announced last month that Russia’s nuclear doctrine, last updated in 2020, had been amended according to changes proposed by Putin that were in the process of being formalised.
Putin said the changes could see Moscow authorise a nuclear strike if Russia was hit by conventional weapons by a nuclear power, in a concerning lowering of the so-called ‘nuclear threshold’.
The changes also enable Moscow to respond with a nuclear strike if a non-nuclear state launches an attack on Russia while being supported by a nuclear power.
The latest drills follow Trump’s re-election amid deep strains in relations between Russia and the NATO countries over Putin’s war against Ukraine
It comes a week after Putin staged a mock nuclear war when he launched scores of missiles capable of unleashing a ‘massive’ strike in a stark warning to the West
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