The head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos said on Friday that the country’s Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles (codenamed Satan II in the West), which can carry 10 or more nuclear warheads, have been put into combat service, the state news agency reported. RIA.

In June, Vladimir Putin said that the Sarmat missiles would be put into combat service “soon,” according to The Guardian.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia is ready to use all means, including nuclear weapons, to protect its “territorial integrity.”

Last year, the Russian president declared that the occupied territories in Ukraine are considered Russian, which puts them under Moscow’s nuclear umbrella. But he also said that Russia does not need to resort to using nuclear weapons.

It will be recalled that in February, while US President Joe Biden was in Ukraine, Russia conducted a test of the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which apparently failed. It was tested again (according to the Russians, successfully) in 2022, when Dmitry Rogozin announced that 50 such missiles would soon be ready.

The Sarmat was first unveiled in 2016, and Russian state media reported that it had a range of more than 11,000 kilometers. The missile can carry a 100-ton warhead and was designed to be a successor to the R-36M Voivoda intercontinental ballistic missile.

Western experts called the 2022 test a “nuclear saber” and saw it as an attempt to divert attention from Russia’s military failures at the time, such as the sinking of its Black Sea flagship, the Moskva.

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