Russia has successfully tested its nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable Burevestnik missile and is preparing to deploy it, President Vladimir V. Putin said Sunday, a pointed message to the West after plans for a summit with President Trump collapsed.
Mr. Putin, dressed in a military uniform, listened as the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery V. Gerasimov, announced that the test had taken place on Tuesday, and that the missile had remained in flight for 15 hours and flown 8,700 miles. Mr. Gerasimov also said combat training launches of Yars and Sineva intercontinental ballistic missiles and two Kh-102 cruise missiles had taken place, which Mr. Putin said “once again confirmed the reliability of Russia’s nuclear shield.”
Moscow started developing antimissile defense systems in the early 2000s, after President George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Mr. Lewis said. When Russia announced the Burevestnik in 2018, Mr. Putin portrayed it as a response to U.S. efforts to build comprehensive missile defense shields.
On Sunday, after the Burevestnik was tested, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, pledged that any long-range strikes in Russia would be met with a “staggering” response.
Sunday’s announcement of the successful test came weeks after the Trump administration lifted restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western long-range weapons to target Russian oil refineries and plants. Some scholars said, however, that the Burevestnik announcement should be viewed less in the context of battlefield developments in Ukraine and more related to Moscow’s offer to extend New START, the last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia.
New START expires in February. In September, Mr. Putin offered to extend existing limits on the number of deployed long-range nuclear weapons for one year, provided that the United States did the same. Mr. Trump said the proposal “sounds like a good idea to me.”
A one-year extension would also help the Kremlin keep its resources focused on the war in Ukraine by avoiding an expensive buildup of deployed weapons at a time when Russia’s expensive war is straining its economy.
Russia says a lot of things, and this seems like a dumb weapon. ICBMs can hit basically anywhere on earth way faster than 15 hours. Sabre-rattling indeed.