Newsweek – Moscow tested two nuclear-capable weapons just ahead of a speech in which Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of a potential ballistic response to missile threats against his country.
In his annual State of the Nation speech Wednesday, Putin criticized the United States’s recent decision to abandon the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and cautioned against anticipated plans to deploy land-based missiles with ranges restricted by the 1987 agreement. The Russian leader has already ordered retaliatory deployments and warned that such weapons would not only target U.S. missile systems, but also “the decision-making centers that are behind the missile systems which threaten us.”
The remarks came a year after Putin’s last annual address, when he announced the development of several advanced weapons systems he touted as invincible to modern defenses. These included the RS-28 Sarmat superheavy intercontinental ballistic missile and the Poseidon underwater drone, both of which have recently undergone new testing.
