Vladimir Putin has ramped up his nuclear threats to the West by moving a powerful nuclear missile for at least the third time.
New footage shows a towering Yars strategic missile being driven into a cavernous garage in the Tver region of Russia just northwest of Moscow.
The complex is a few hundred miles from Nato members Latvia and Estonia as well as Belarus.
The deployment was marked by a grand military ceremony in the snow-covered Bologovsky Strategic Missile Forces compound.
Russia’s Strategic Missile Force Commander Colonel-General Sergey Karakayev told broadcaster Zvezda, according to news agency Tass: ‘A missile regiment in the Tver Region in the Bologoye formation has entered combat duty with a road-mobile Yars system.’
A Yars missile can be launched in seven minutes and has a sprawling 7,500-mile range capable of reaching the UK and the US.
The mammoth missile system is identical to the Topal-M missile system except that it can store multiple independently targetable warheads (MIRV).
This means the warheads can shoot off from the rest of the missile after launch – they can navigate independently.
The Russian defence ministry confirmed yesterday that two Yars missiles have been installed into silos at Kozelsk this week.
Kozelsk missile formation deputy commander for armament Colonel Alexander Khizhnyak said: ‘Work has been completed at the Kozelsk formation to load the next missile into a silo-based launcher.
‘This work is a highly responsible effort requiring that the personnel display high professional skills and accuracy in fulfilling the assigned tasks.’
Unlike Kozelsk, where missiles are launched from fixed shafts, Tver is a more flexible mobile system.
The Kozelsk complex reportedly has a carrying capacity 12 times more than the American atomic bomb, Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.
In October, Putin was seen overseeing drills by the country’s strategic nuclear forces involving multiple practice launches of Yars missiles in the northern Plesetsk launch site.
The nuclear showboating comes ahead of the annual Strategic Missile Forces Day on December 17.
Putin has resorted to increasing sabre-rattling as he raises a terrifying prospect not considered since the Cold War: nuclear attacks.
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In an angry speech full of anti-West bluster, Putin warned he would use ‘all available means’ to defend Russian territory amid the Ukraine war.
The atomic bombs that the US dropped on Japan in 1945 ‘created a precedent’, he added.
Western analysts doubt, however, that Moscow would resort to larger nuclear arms and instead would opt for a small tactical strike in an unpopulated area.
And a gust of wind is one of the biggest deterrents to Moscow – depending on the direction, it would blow radiation back into Russian territory.
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