Putin to test feared Satan 2 nuclear missile ‘by flying it over the South Pole’

The Satan 2 nuclear missile is the biggest in the world – and Putin is set to roll it out (Picture: East2West News)

Vladimir Putin is set to give the world’s biggest ballistic missile a trial run by launching it over the South Pole, according to Russian state media.

Named Satan 2, the ‘unstoppable’ 15,880mph doomsday weapon weighs 208 tonnes and is the size of a 14-storey tower block. 

And the Russian president is set to put the first regiment to be armed with the intercontinental nuclear missile on ‘combat duty’ next month.

That’s despite an astonishing admission that the apocalyptic projectile – known as Sarmat in Russia – has not yet been properly tested.

The shocking plan was revealed by Putin’s own Russian state media in a report which was rapidly censored shortly after it went live.

TASS news agency reported that ‘even a truncated LCI [flight development tests], and assuming all launches are successful, would require several more launches, including via the South Pole’.

Claims over the South Pole being used as a testing ground were hastily censored from the report – but still remain in cached versions.

The huge missile is the size of a 14-storey tower block (Picture: Dmitry Rogozin/East2West News)

Clearly determined to flex his nuclear muscle to the West, the report is likely to trigger alarm across the rest of Europe as Putin prepares to deploy a rocket designed to be his ultimate weapon against NATO countries.

The fact the nuclear missile has so far only had one successful flight test across Russia will be of particular concern. 

‘The first Sarmat regiment, consisting of a command post and several silo launchers will go on combat duty as part of the Uzhur missile formation of the Strategic Missile Forces in December of this year,’ a defence source also told TASS in part of the story that was not redacted.

The regiment is already on ‘experimental combat duty’ in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, said another source.

Putin is arming a regiment with the missile and making them ‘combat ready’ in December – but the missile has only been tested once so far (Picture: TV Zvezda/East2West News)

Yet the first source admitted tests of the Putin fifth generation missile are behind schedule and ‘have not yet been completed’.

Only one fully confirmed successful test is known to have been carried out in April 2022.

Now ‘development tests of the missile will continue’ even as its command post and launch silos are put on ‘combat duty’ in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.

TASS reported: ‘The Sarmat flight tests are currently being carried out from the Plesetsk spaceport to the Kura training ground in Kamchatka.’

The RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile pictured in testing in April 2022, blasting off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Mirny, Arkhangelsk Oblast (Picture: Russian Defence Ministry/ZUMA Wire/Shutterstock)

But ultimately Putin will need to test his new nuclear toy by flying it over the South Pole, the story suggested before it was censored.

The monster hypersonic missile is designed to strike the West by flying over the North or South Poles, making it impossible to strike down by air defences.

Defence minister Sergei Shoigu said last month that the Makeyev missile design bureau in Miass was ‘solving the task of equipping the first missile regiment with the Sarmat complex at the main facility of the Strategic Missile Forces’.

He inspected the production line.

Putin has repeatedly insisted the missile will be ‘put on combat duty in the near future’ (Picture: MOD/East2West news)

Putin last month insisted that his designers had ‘finished work’ on the Sarmat ‘super heavy missile’.

Already more than a year behind schedule, Putin said: ‘We just need to finish some of the procedures in a purely administrative and bureaucratic way, and move on to mass production and put them on combat duty. And we will do this in the near future.’

Eleven months ago he said much the same.

‘In the near future, Sarmat ICBMs will be put on combat duty for the first time,’ he said at the time. ‘We know there will be a certain delay in time but this does not change our plans.’

The Sarmat-Satan-2 complex is due to replace the Voevoda – or Satan – missile which has been in service since the 1980s.

R-36M2 Voevoda missile was tested no less than 17 times in the Cold War before it was put on combat duty.

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