Russian television imagines a nuclear attack against three European capitals

Russia announced on April 20 that it had carried out a first test firing of the Sarmat missile.

Photo released by the Russian space agency Roscosmos.

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1 min

A map broadcast on Russian television showing Paris, Berlin and London within range of a Russian nuclear missile raises the question of its use by Moscow. 

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His name: Sarmat.

In the West, it is nicknamed Satan 2. According to a map broadcast on Russian television Rossiya-1 and widely shared on the internet, this intercontinental missile would reach Berlin from Kaliningrad in just 106 seconds and Paris in 200 seconds.

On Russian public television Rossiya 1, we draw an infographic on the time it would take a Russian Sarmat missile to reach Paris or London from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

For Paris, 200 seconds pic.twitter.com/Dnw3wz4kO5

— Vincent Lamigeon (@VincentLamigeon) April 29, 2022

In fact, this heavy-class missile, developed to replace its Soviet-era counterparts that were then produced in Ukraine, is still in the testing phase.

that it had successfully conducted a first test firing of the missile from the launch pad in Plesetsk, in northwestern Russia, to another military site on the peninsula. Russian from Kamchatka, in the Far East, more than 5,000 kilometers away.

Russian television is therefore going a little hastily by already imagining Paris, Berlin and London under the nuclear fire of Satan-2.

If it wanted to, Russia would still have enough to do it, with the R-36M2 Voyevoda, the ancestor of Sarmat.

Also called Satan-1.

The distribution of this card is part of a context of verbal outbidding by Moscow, which has multiplied in recent days the threats of "

" or even the use of nuclear weapons, faced with the qualitative and quantitative acceleration of Western military aid to Ukraine.

But a nuclear commitment is based on a doctrine, on rules.

This is part of deterrence.

And the recent remarks of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov do not say otherwise.

This option is not on the table today. 

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