From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"Putin’s Satan II missile explodes on take-off
Russia’s “Satan II” intercontinental ballistic missile exploded after crashing back to earth in yet another failed test.
The nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, dubbed the “world’s deadliest weapon”, was launched from the Yasny test site in Russia’s Orenburg region.
Just seconds after lift-off, the Sarmat RS-28 rocket veered off course emitting black plumes of smoke, before the fiery wreck plummeted to the ground.
The missile landed near the launchpad in a huge fireball, emitting a purple cloud of smoke into the sky.
During a previous test launch the munition exploded at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome 500 miles north of Moscow in September 2024, leaving a huge crater at its launch site.
Despite this, Vladimir Putin expressed hopes weeks ago that the Sarmat would be ready next year, saying: “This year, we will put [the Sarmat] through combat trials, and next year, deploy it on combat duty.”...
Vyacheslav Volodin, a member of Russia’s security council, previously claimed it could hit the European Parliament in Strasbourg in under four minutes...
Etienne Marcuz, an associate fellow at France’s Foundation for Strategic Research think tank, said: “This would be the fifth failure in a row for this strategic missile, presented as the new flagship of Russian nuclear deterrence. Its submarine-launched counterpart, the Bulava [SLBM], does not seem to be in much better shape.
“Yet it is precisely this nuclear deterrence that allows Russia to engage in what is called ‘aggressive sanctuarisation’, that is, to wage wars of aggression like the invasion of Ukraine while threatening any potential supporters of the aggressed countries with nuclear retaliation.”"
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