Russia already has enough nukes to guarantee the destruction of its enemies (Credit: Barcroft Media)

Last week, Vladimir Putin revealed that Russia was building a new range of ‘hypersonic’ nuclear weapons capable of dodging missile defences and wreaking destruction on an apocalyptic scale.

You might think this sounds like a truly terrifying development, but we’re sad to report that Russia could already wipe out America, Britain or Europe in minutes using traditional nukes – and there’s no way of protecting ourselves.

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We spoke to one British military expert who told us Putin’s announcement was little more than political showboating which made little difference to the world’s strategic balance of power.

On Thursday, The Kremlin unveiled a number of terrifying cutting-edge weapons at an event in which President Putin told enemies they would need to ‘listen to us now’.




One of these is a nuclear missile called Avangard which is capable of making sharp twists and turns on its way to targets, meaning it’s ‘absolutely invulnerable to any defence system’.

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A computer simulation of a Russian hypersonic nuclear warhead being released from a booster rocket (Photo: EPA/ Kremlin)

Russia also confirmed it’s been testing a nuclear missile known as ‘Satan II’, which is said to be so powerful it could destroy an area the size of France.

Justin Bronk, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told us that Putin could already bypass missile defences using his massive armoury of traditional nuclear weapons.

Bronk said that Putin’s announcement was designed to boost his ‘tough guy image’ and denied that the new technology meant his adversaries were facing a greater threat than before.

‘This announcement is domestically aimed,’ he said.

‘The current generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles are already incredibly difficult to intercept.

‘The US has no basic missile defence capacity which would put a dent in Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal.’

Hypersonic intercontinental missiles can strike anywhere on Earth (Photo: EPA/ Kremlin)

Hypersonic weapons travel at speeds of Mach 5 and above. But traditional long range ICBMs and other nukes already travel at speeds which make difficult or even impossible to destroy.

Russia’s new missiles are scary because they can manoeuvre themselves whilst approaching a target, making them harder to knock out of the sky.

Missile defences generally use rely on using one or more missiles to bring down a nuke before it reaches its intended target, but the US simply doesn’t have enough of these anti-nuke weapons to defend itself.

RUSI’s Bronk cited the example of American’s Ground-Based Interceptors, which have a ‘patchy testing history’ and have not been made in sufficient numbers to defang Putin’s nuclear arsenal.

Russia has just under 2,000 missiles which are ready to be launched at any time. Some of these feature several warheads which can be aimed at different targets.

A screenshot from Putin’s demo video for the new missile, which appears to show an attack on the US (Photo: EPA/ Kremlin)

If Putin pressed his big red button, there’s no way the US would be able to stop all the missiles. The only option would be retaliation.

‘It would be more difficult to intercept an independently manoeuvrable hypersonic weapon, but I don’t think this changes the strategic equation,’ Bronk added.

‘There is already no way to blunt Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence, which is why we stick with mutually assured destruction.



‘Russia and America already have the ability to utterly destroy each other and that has not changed since the Cold War.

‘In ballistic defence terms, the defender needs to spend 10 dollars for every dollar.

‘It’s more efficient to build more missiles.’