Vladimir Putin has staged a show of nuclear force amid Donald Trump’s re-election by launching a terrifying Yars intercontinental ballistic missile.
Images released by the Russian Defense Ministry show a 19,000 mph missile being carried on a special cargo unit in the Kaluga region.
Yars missiles have a range of up to 7,500 miles, enabling strikes in both the United States and Europe.
They are currently the main element of the land component of the Russian strategic nuclear force.
The latest exercises come after Trump’s re-election amid deep tensions in relations between Russia and NATO countries over Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has staged a show of nuclear force amid Donald Trump’s re-election by launching a terrifying Yars intercontinental ballistic missile.
Images released by the Russian Ministry of Defense show a 19,000 mph missile carried in a special cargo unit.
Yars missiles have a range of up to 7,500 miles, enabling strikes in both the United States and Europe.
While Moscow was supposed to prefer Trump to his opponent Kamala Harris, Putin has not officially congratulated the US president-elect.
On Wednesday, Putin’s spokesman said of the United States:
“Let us not forget that we are talking about a hostile country that is directly and indirectly involved in a war against our nation.”
It also comes a week after Putin staged a nuclear war drill when he launched dozens of missiles capable of unleashing a “massive” attack in a stark warning to the West.
The biggest 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.
Defense Minister Andrei Belousov warned the West that the exercise was intended to show how Russia could carry out “a massive nuclear strike using strategic offensive forces in response to a nuclear attack by the enemy.”
The Kremlin also announced last month that Russia’s nuclear doctrine, last updated in 2020, had been modified in line with changes proposed by Putin that were in the process of being formalized.
Putin said the changes could lead Moscow to authorize a nuclear strike if Russia were attacked with conventional weapons by a nuclear power, in a worrying lowering of the so-called “nuclear threshold.”
The changes also allow Moscow to respond with a nuclear strike if a non-nuclear state launches an attack against Russia while it has the support of a nuclear power.
The latest exercises come after Trump’s re-election amid deep tensions in relations between Russia and NATO countries over Putin’s war against Ukraine.
It comes a week after Putin staged a nuclear war drill when he launched dozens of missiles capable of unleashing a “massive” attack in a stark warning to the West.