CNN has published a surprising report Tuesday night, claiming based on two unnamed US officials that Russia conducted an ultra-provocative intercontinental ballistic missile test while President Biden was in Ukraine on Monday.
The sources say the US believes the ICBM test “failed” – however, no explanation or details were given for the claim other than Putin simply didn’t mention the test in his big Tuesday speech in Moscow.
“Russia notified the United States in advance of the launch through deconfliction lines, one official said. Another official said that the test did not pose a risk to the United States and that the US did not view the test as an anomaly or an escalation,” CNN writes.
The officials described it as a test of the heavy SARMAT missile – dubbed in the West the ‘Satan II’ – which is nuclear capable.
The following is the perhaps dubious “evidence” of the purported test failure as highlighted by CNN:
It has been successfully tested before and had this one worked, US officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would have highlighted the test in his State of the Nation address on Tuesday.
Instead, Putin made no mention of the launch in the speech that lasted an hour and 45 minutes. He did, however, formally declare that Russia will be suspending his country’s participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States, imperiling the last remaining pact that regulates the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals.
If Russia wanted to send a resounding and threatening message, there remains the possibility that footage of the SARMAT missile launch could be released later in the week, assuming it did happen.
Often, though not always, the Kremlin likes to widely publicize its major weapons tests by circulating official video. In some instances, videos are belatedly released.
If indeed the Kremlin conducted a ‘Satan II’ missile test with Biden in Kyiv, and releases the video while he’s still traveling in Eastern Europe (currently in Poland), this would without doubt be taken by the West as a huge escalation and direct threat, as it sends a not so subtle and ominous ‘message’ at a moment America’s commander-in-chief is in the region.
This post was originally published at Zero Hedge
