Russian state-run media said the nation's defense ministry readied a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile that can deliver a payload massively more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
A video posted on Russian channel RUTUBE showed a Yars ICBM, capable of reaching the U.S. and all of Europe, being transported to the Kozelsk missile base in the Kaluga region in central Russia and loaded into a silo. The process took a few hours with the help of a special transporter-loader, Tass reported.
The Yars missile entered the Russian military in 2010 and is an improved version of the Topol-M rocket. The Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance said the Yars has a range of up to 12,000 kilometers and can carry up to 10 independently targeted warheads with a yield of up to 300 kilotons each. By comparison, the nuclear bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima near the end of World War II had a yield of 15 kilotons.
Tass reported the deployment was in anticipation of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces Day on Saturday, but multiple Western media outlets reported Russia was flexing its nuclear muscles to the West.
"This operation is important, because it will allow a yet another ICBM to enter the combat duty as scheduled," said missile force commander Col. Alexey Sokolov, according to Tass.
The Mirror reported Russian combat engineer Vadim Vyazovsky told TV Zvezda, the Russian defense ministry's channel: "I feel proud of Russia that my country is putting such products into service so that the Motherland can sleep well."
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his nuclear forces to be on high alert soon after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February. Since then, he has hinted about the possible of use of nuclear weapons in the war.
"The rhetoric that is coming out of Russia, and not just from Vladimir Putin, but from others is incredibly dangerous, it is destabilizing, it is not something that we would expect from a nuclear power, some of the language that is being used," Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said in October. "And that is why we're certainly urging de-escalation when it comes to not just this language, but also just what we're seeing in Ukraine."
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