In video released by the Kremlin yesterday, Putin, dressed in camouflage fatigues, could be seen meeting with senior Russian military figures.
The footage showed General Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of general staff, telling Putin that the Burevestnik missile covered 14,000km in a key test on Tuesday.
Gen Gerasimov said the Burevestnik, or Storm Petrel in Russian, spent 15 hours in the air on nuclear power, adding “that’s not the limit”.
Putin then told the general: “We need to determine the possible uses and begin preparing the infrastructure for deploying these weapons to our armed forces.”
He also claimed the missile was invulnerable to current and future missile defences, due to its almost unlimited range and unpredictable flight path.
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Russian president Vladimir Putin. Photo: AP
On Wednesday, Putin directed drills of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces that featured practice missile launches. The exercise came after his planned summit on Ukraine with US president Donald Trump was put on hold.
The Kremlin said the drills involved all parts of Moscow’s nuclear triad, including intercontinental ballistic missiles that were test-fired from launch facilities in north-western Russia and a submarine in the Barents Sea. The drills also involved Tu-95 strategic bombers firing long-range cruise missiles.
The exercise tested the skills of military command structures, the Kremlin said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Kremlin said yesterday that Russian armed forces will respond forcefully in the event of strikes deep inside Russia.
“Like Mr Putin said, the response will be overwhelming,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Mr Peskov added that a date for the summit has not been agreed, and that Mr Trump was the one to postpone it after initially suggesting it could take place by the end of the month.
But Mr Peskov insisted that the summit had not been cancelled, and said recent US sanctions against Russia’s top oil companies were not a reason to abandon dialogue.
“The presidents can’t meet for the sake of meeting; they can’t waste their time, and they’re open about it,” he said in an interview with Russian state TV released yesterday, describing peace talks as “a complex process”.
Russia targeted Ukraine’s capital with drones, killing three people in their homes, authorities said early yesterday.
At least 29 people were wounded, seven of them children, in the second consecutive night-time attack on Kyiv to claim civilian lives. Ukraine’s interior minister Ihor Klymenko said a 19-year-old woman and her 46-year-old mother were among those killed.
He couldn’t get out because there was a fire, so he jumped down from the third floor into a nearby tree
Russian drones caused fires in two residential buildings in the capital’s Desnianskyi district. Emergency crews evacuated civilians from a nine-storey and a 16-storey building, put out flames and cleared the rubble.
Olha Yevhenivha (74) said there was so much smoke from the fire that she couldn’t leave her apartment.
“Even until now our windows are totally black from the smoke, and it was impossible to go down, so that’s why we put wet blankets on our doors and balcony,” she said.
Ihor Motchanyi, a soccer player, said he and his parents “miraculously survived” after a drone sparked a blaze inside their home the day after his 25th birthday.
“My mother and I left. My father stayed behind in the apartment and wanted to take some documents, the most important things. He couldn’t get out because there was a fire, so he jumped down from the [third] floor” into a nearby tree, Mr Motchanyi said.
He said his family were planning to leave Kyiv temporarily, and stay with relatives in a village.
Russia attacked Ukraine with 101 drones overnight into yesterday, according to Ukraine’s air force, of which 90 were shot down and neutralised.
Volodymyr Zelensky. Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson
Five drones hit four locations and drone debris fell on five other places, the statement said.
The attack came a day after a Russian missiles and drones killed four people, including two in Kyiv, prompting fresh pleas from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky for Western air defence systems.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed yesterday that over the previous day, its forces struck energy facilities and rail infrastructure serving Ukraine’s war effort, as well as other military targets such as troop deployment points and a drone factory.
It did not comment specifically on strikes on Kyiv, nor on the civilian casualties reported by Ukraine.
In Russia’s Bryansk region near Ukraine, two civilians were hospitalised following Ukrainian drone strikes, according to regional governor Alexander Bogomaz. At least 26 Ukrainian drones were downed over south-western Russia yesterday, according to the defence ministry in Moscow.