Putin puts doomsday Satan-2 nuclear weapon ‘that can sink Britain’ on combat duty for the first time

Vladimir Putin today put the world’s most powerful Armageddon nuclear missile, dubbed Satan-2, into combat service.

The “unstoppable” 25,880 km/h intercontinental missile system, known to the Russians as Sarmat, is the size of a 14-story tower block.

The announcement came from Yury Borisov, head of the Russian space agency.

“The Sarmat strategic complex has been put into combat service,” he told students at an educational event.

He did not give further details.

The 208-ton missile was due to be launched late last year, but was mysteriously delayed.

Russian propagandists have claimed that one attack could sink Britain under the sea.

The move comes as Russia suffers from the setbacks of the war in Ukraine, while Kiev gains ground and subjects Putin’s territory to increasing drone strikes.

Yet its implementation – if the move is real – comes after just one proven test launch.

Others were predicted but not announced.

It also comes shortly after the Russian Space Agency faced international humiliation last month over its botched lunar mission.

Nine months ago, Putin threatened: “In the near future, Sarmat ICBMs will be put into combat service for the first time.

“We know there will be some delays, but this doesn’t change our plans – everything will be done.”

In June, he boasted: “In the near future, the first launch pads of Sarmat (Satan-2) will be put into combat service with a new heavy missile…”

The Armageddon weapon can be loaded with multiple warheads.

Putin TV propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov – also deputy head of the company that runs the state broadcaster Rossiya 1 – threatened Britain in revenge for a comment Prime Minister Boris Johnson never made about attacking Russia with a nuclear strike.

Downing Street dismissed the claim – which was widely repeated in Russian state media – as “another example of disinformation being spread by the Kremlin,” but it continues to be heralded in Moscow.

“The island is so small that one Sarmat missile is enough to drown it once and for all,” Kiselyov said.

“The Russian missile Sarmat (Satan-2), the most powerful in the world… is capable of destroying… an area the size of Texas or England.

‘One launch, Boris, and there’s no more England.

‘For once and for all.’

The first and only known full-scale test of Satan-2 was announced with great fanfare once it took place on April 20, 2022, with Putin reaching out via video link.

The silo-based Satan-2 launch took place from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.

The following month, former head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin, seen as a close ally of Putin, said nearly fifty Satan-2 missiles, which were in mass production, would soon be in combat service.

A major ICBM test was scheduled for early June and locals near the Kura test area were warned to steer clear of the target site in remote Kamchatka.

But this test never took place.

On June 25 last year, Rogozin boasted: “We are absolutely on schedule, we are now preparing for the second flight test of the Sarmat.”

The following month, Rogozin was fired for unknown reasons while his promised new job was yet to come.

His successor, ex-Deputy Prime Minister Borisov, in July 2022 reiterated the claim that the missile is in mass production, without repeating Putin’s goal that Satan-2 should be on combat duty by December last year.

Defense analysts who suspected a hypersonic hyperbole pointed out that the Russian R-36M2 Voevoda missile was tested as many as 17 times before it was put into combat service.

Some experts will question the reality of today’s announcement.

Another missile – RT-2PM Topol – was tested ten times before deployment.

“In this context, the truth of the terms Rogozin speaks of – that Sarmat is in (series) production and will soon be placed in ‘combat duty’ – seems doubtful,” defense expert Leonid Nersisyan has said.

“It is much more likely that Sarmat will undergo the same testing, prototyping and experimentation program as its predecessors,” he wrote in Shephard Media.

“Actual acceptance of the ICBM in service with the Strategic Missile Forces… is hardly achievable by 2024.”

More than a year ago, Rogozin visited the Krasmash defense plant in Krasnoyarsk, Eastern Siberia, which he called the “Doomsday Plant,” to inspect the process of producing Satan-2 for flight tests.

The missile was rolled into the woods in front of the cameras – and the saber-rattling Rogozin said: “The most powerful nuclear missile in the world with a global range is being prepared for new tests.”

Yet there is no evidence that these tests took place.