Meduza’s latest daily newsletter: Wednesday, September 25, 2024 What the Kremlin’s failed Sarmat launches mean for nuclear deterrence, tallying returned Ukraine War veterans’ murders, and Duma moves ahead with ‘childfree’ ban

What the latest failed Sarmat test means for Russia’s missile development and nuclear brinkmanship

Available evidence indicates that a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile exploded and destroyed its launch silo during a test last week. Open-source-intelligence researchers and professional weapons experts say satellite images show the results of a powerful blast at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, likely caused by the failed test of an RS-28 Sarmat rocket. NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System has also provided data that confirm a fire on the Sarmat launch pad. For a better grasp of the accident’s probable causes and consequences, Meduza spoke to Maxim Starchak, an expert on Russian nuclear policy and strategic weapons and a fellow at Queen’s University’s Center for International and Defense Policy.

What could have caused the missile explosion?

Sarmat missiles rely on heptyl-based liquid fuel that is “toxic, explosive, and fire-hazardous.” Starchak listed five possible explanations for last week’s launch failure:

1. The explosion could have occurred during fuel loading if some procedures were overlooked.  
2. The explosion could also have happened during fuel unloading after technicians detected a problem and aborted the launch.
3. Design flaws could have caused a leak during the rocket’s launch preparation, leading to contact between the fuel and flammable vapors.  
4. The first-stage engine could have exploded immediately after ignition or launch.  
5. Commands to start the engine might have failed, causing the rocket to fall back to Earth, exploding and destroying the silo.

Following Russia’s only successful Sarmat launch in April 2022, Roscosmos's testing capabilities should have made another four to five test launches possible since then. If any of these had worked out, the world would have heard from the Russian Defense Ministry or the international experts who monitor missile launches.

Starchak told Meduza that the missile’s apparent technical shortcomings are less serious than the destruction of the launch silo. Restoration work (or the construction of an entirely new silo) will take months or even years, “significantly delaying the Sarmat’s testing program,” which will leave Russia without a “technically ready” heavy missile for a long time. The Sarmat’s predecessor, the “Voyevoda” strategic missile system developed in coordination with Ukrainian designers, hasn’t flown for more than a decade. 

The Sarmat isn’t the game-changing weapon the Kremlin says it is

In theory, Sarmat missiles can carry up to 16 independently targetable nuclear warheads, as well as “Avangard” hypersonic glide warheads. They are silo-based missiles intended to be deployed in two Strategic Missile Forces divisions based in towns in the Orenburg and Krasnoyarsk regions. The Russian military ordered the start of serial production in 2022 and made the missiles formally operational a year later, but no Strategic Missile Forces regiment is yet armed with the new weapons.

Starchak said the Sarmat is fundamentally overkill — “like shooting sparrows with a cannon” — and would still fulfill its nuclear deterrence tasks even with weaker specifications. He attributed the Sarmat’s hurried development and adoption to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which ended the cooperation with the Ukrainian design bureau that worked on Voyevoda missiles. “Obviously, no one wanted to take responsibility for the Voyevoda, and the development of the Sarmat also meant additional funding,” Starchak explained.

Concerning nuclear deterrence, Sarmat missiles change nothing, he added. According to Russia’s space agency, Moscow plans to produce 46 of these rockets (plus a few extras for testing) — exactly the number needed to replace its Voyevoda arsenal. 

The escalation to nuclear war

More than a year ago, Starchak told Meduza that Vladimir Putin’s escalatory rhetoric on nuclear weapons was more a bluff than an imminent threat. Asked about the Kremlin’s more recent bluster and Russia’s Sarmat tests, Starchak said his assessment is unchanged. “Nuclear weapons are not used in a vacuum; they are an escalatory measure in response to something,” he told Meduza. “Escalation is a two-sided process. The fact that the Kremlin and its supporters bring up nuclear weapons doesn’t actually change anything.”

According to Starchak, Russian nuclear escalation would trigger U.S. responses. Instead, when Moscow conducts exercises of its strategic and non-strategic nuclear forces, patrols the borders of Western countries with bombers and submarines, moves nuclear weapons to Belarus, and suspends its participation in the New START treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Washington says that Russia isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary — “nothing it hasn’t done before” — and doesn’t adjust its nuclear policy. “Since the U.S. isn’t responding to the escalation,” Starchak told Meduza, “the escalation isn’t happening, and nuclear weapons are not being introduced into the conflict, no matter how much Russia might want it.”

At the same time, said Starchak, Russia’s provocative actions are, in fact, cautiously crafted to avoid unpredictable escalation: “It does not load nuclear missiles onto strategic bombers for patrol missions, does not return tactical nuclear weapons to naval carriers, and has not resumed nuclear testing.” 

On the subject of escalation risks in possible changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, Starchak warned that controversial military actions that don’t rely on nukes are already being debated in the West (authorization for Ukraine’s long-range strikes inside Russia) and Moscow (targeting Ukraine’s supply locations on NATO territory).

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Meduza’s feature reporting

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The news in brief

• 🕯️ Russia dropped two guided bombs on downtown Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, killing two people and injuring another 19 (including three children), according to local officials
• 🚨 The anti-Kadyrov Telegram channel 1ADAT reports that Chechen police abducted Lom-Ali Idigov, the cousin of the late separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev. Charges are still unknown, but 1ADAT writers speculate that Idigov may have angered the authorities by posting images of Dudayev on Instagram.
• 🚑 Human rights activists say Zarema Musaeva — the mother of exiled opposition activist Abubakar Yangulbaev, imprisoned on spurious charges of striking a police officer after Chechen authorities abducted her — has become seriously ill due to complications related to diabetes. She is now awaiting hospitalization and still hoping for early parole ahead of her prison sentence’s completion in March 2025.
• 👮 The Russian authorities have reportedly opened a criminal case against journalist Tatyana Felgenhauer for repeatedly failing to observe draconian disclosure requirements imposed on designated “foreign agents” (a status she acquired one year ago). Felgenhauer now lives abroad, reports for Mediazona, and hosts a talk show on Alexander Plushev’s YouTube channel.
• ☢️ In an address to the U.N. General Assembly, President Zelensky warned of a “nuclear incident threat” at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and claimed that Moscow is using “satellites from third-party countries” to plan attacks designed to sever other nuclear power plants’ connections to Ukraine’s power grid
• 🇺🇸 A Trump campaign official told The Associated Press that the Republican nominee will not meet with Zelensky during the Ukrainian president’s U.S. visit this week
• 🇺🇸 The Biden Administration announced on Wednesday additional security assistance to Ukraine valued at an estimated $375 million (the support includes air-to-ground weapons, munitions for rocket systems and artillery, armored vehicles, and anti-tank weapons)
• 🪖 Senior U.S. and European officials knowledgeable of the broad outlines of President Zelensky’s much-touted “victory plan” told The Wall Street Journal that it offers “no clear path to a Ukraine victory”
• 👪 More than 150 federal lawmakers, including the heads of the State Duma and the Federation Council, have sponsored draft legislation that would ban “childfree” advocacy (described in the bills as “promoting the refusal to have children”). If adopted, the initiative would amend existing laws guiding Russia’s censorship of the Internet, mass media, advertising, and films, largely equating “childfree” advocacy and already prohibited “gay propaganda.”
• 🇨🇳 Subsidiary of Russian state-owned arms company Almaz-Antey has established weapons program in China to develop and produce long-range Garpiya-3 attack drones for use in Ukraine, reports Reuters. The White House says it’s “not seen anything to suggest the Chinese government was aware of the transactions involved.”
• ⚖️ Returning Ukraine War veterans have killed at least 242 people and seriously injured another 227, according to a new investigation by journalists at Verstka Media that relies on news reports and publicly available court records. Former convicts have killed more often than other returning veterans and are also likelier to commit crimes against women. In 85 percent of the cases Vertska reviewed, judges treated offenders’ past combat experience as a mitigating factor.
• 🏳️‍⚧️ 66-year-old Communist Party lawmaker Nikolai Vasiliev was the only State Duma deputy to vote against the first draft of legislation banning the adoption of Russian children by nationals of countries that allow gender affirmation surgery. Vasiliev did not respond when Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called on the Duma’s lone naysayer to identify himself. 
• 👮 A Moscow court has jailed former Sochi Mayor Alexey Kopaygorodsky after officials arrested him in occupied Luhansk on charges of embezzling public funds. Earlier this year, Kopaygorodsky resigned from his post in Sochi and later deployed to Ukraine’s Luhansk region as a volunteer soldier. Police in Sochi have also reportedly raided the offices of several of Kopaygorodsky’s old government colleagues.
• 🏦 The Financial Times reports that JPMorgan Chase and HSBC unwittingly processed Wagner Group payments for companies in Africa controlled by the late Russian mercenary leader and failed insurrectionist Yevgeny Prigozhin

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