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Topics: News, US News, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Russia
Gerrard Kaonga
Topics: News, US News, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Russia
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have been engaging in a war of words while fears of a major conflict remain high.
Over the weekend, Russian leader Putin boasted that the country now has the ‘highest level’ nuclear forces following a successful weapons test earlier in the week.
The nation has bragged that a missile that they tested has a possibly ‘unlimited range’ and runs on nuclear power, making it able to fly considerably further than other missiles. They have also said it is able to evade missile detection and defense systems.
The missile in question is known as the SSC-X-9 and has been in development for years.
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The chief general staff of the Russian armed forces, Valery V. Gerasimov, has also spoken about the missile’s extensive capabilities.
He added it remained in flight for 15 hours and traveled 8,700 miles during testing. He went as far to say it was ‘a tiny flying Chernobyl’, in reference to the nuclear power plant in Ukraine that became internationally known for a massive explosion in 1986.
In a video shared on social media showing Putin speaking about the weapon, he reportedly said: “This is a unique product that no one in the world has.
“The modernity of our... nuclear deterrent forces, is at the highest level. Well, it would probably be no exaggeration to say that it is at a higher level than all nuclear states.
“We need to identify potential uses and begin preparing the infrastructure for deploying this weapon in our armed forces.”
However, US President Donald Trump has hit back at Putin for the boasts about the missiles and insisted that Russia needs to be more focused on ending the conflict in Ukraine.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One: “I don't think it's an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying, either, by the way.
“You ought to get the war ended, the war that should have taken one week is now in ... its fourth year, that's what you ought to do instead of testing missiles.”
He added: “They know we have a nuclear submarine, the best in the world, right off their coast. It doesn’t need to fly 8,000 miles. They’re not playing games with us. We’re not playing games with them either.”
Some nuclear experts have weighed in on Russia’s announcement and noted that it could ultimately spell bad things to come in the future.
According to a UPI report, nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury College, Jeffrey Lewis, said: “This is a bad development. It is one more science fiction weapon that is going to be destabilizing and hard to address in arms control.”