What 'nuclear pervert' Vladimir Putin's latest missile threats could mean for humanity
Vladimir Putin says its power is unmatched, and claims it has been tested successfully.
The Russian president this week revealed more details about the experimental Burevestnik nuclear missile at a gathering in Sochi, where he said "no person of sound mind" would attack his country.
Moscow has outlined several differences between this weapon and its other nukes, although it's by no means a given that blueprints for the Burevestnik will ever be fully realised.
And, why a regime already in possession of missiles that can reach targets in Europe and the United States (and yes, even Australia) would want to add to its nuclear arsenal is a complicated question.
This is what you need to know about the Russian president's latest threat.
What is the Burevestnik missile?
The Burevestnik is one of five planned weapons Putin unveiled in March 2018.
It translates to Storm Bird (or petrel), and, if successfully developed, would have the longest range of any Russian nuclear weapon.
On Thursday, Putin said the missile could travel many thousands of kilometres.
As well as being nuclear-armed, the Burevestnik would be powered by a small nuclear reactor, which accounts for its extra range (most other missiles are limited by how much fuel they can carry).
Valeriy Akimenko, a Russia military specialist at the Conflict Studies Research Centre, said this meant the weapon, theoretically, had an "unlimited range".
According to the Moscow-based Military-Industrial Courier newspaper, the Burevestnik is designed to fly at a lower altitude than other missiles, making it more difficult to detect.
An animation on the Russian Defence Ministry's YouTube page shows the Burevestnik flying over Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, South America and eventually, hitting the ocean between Hawaii and Alaska.
Does it work?
While speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, Putin said the missile had been tested successfully, although exactly what that means is unclear.
Over the past few years, getting the missile to work has been causing headaches for the Kremlin.
According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative — an international not-for-profit committed to protecting global security — there were at least 13 failed trials of the missile between 2017 and 2019.
In 2019, US intelligence claimed at least five researchers were killed during a test in the White Sea, in Russia's north.
John Erath, the senior policy director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington DC, said Putin's langauge this week probably meant the most recent test was "more successful than the last one, which blew up on launch".
"That spread radioactive material over a large area, so that's a low bar for success," he said.
The US attempted to develop this technology in the 1950s and 60s, but abandoned the project, in part because government officials deemed the weapon "too provocative".
"Obviously Putin thinks otherwise," Mr Akimenko said, before pointing out Russia had previously spent decades developing specific weapons.
"It's not a weapon that Russia badly needs right now, you know, 'we must have it today or tomorrow or there will be no victory in Ukraine'," he said.
"It's not that kind of thing, it plods along."
Why is Russia trying to build it?
Mr Akimenko said Russia already had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world "many times over", so working out the motivations for developing more was complicated.
"On a jocular note, I would describe Putin as a kind of nuclear-aholic, a nuclear addict. Maybe even a nuclear pervert," he said.
"He is a man who seems to be unable to resist what must be quite the heavy influence of the military industrial complex."
A 2020 report from American think tank the Atlantic Council suggested Putin saw the exotic weapons as "a means of ensuring Russia's nuclear deterrent in the face of advancing US capabilities, including missile defences".
Mr Erath said the US missile defence systems could, currently, stop only a "small portion" of the weapons that already exist.
"It [Burevestnik] is a way of saying that, if the US could, at some point in some fantasy world, stop Russian ballistic missiles, they would still have something that could hit the US, or a NATO country, or even Australia," he said.
"But it's all rather based on a fantastical chain of reasoning."
Something 'far more serious' than Burevestnik
In Sochi, Putin said Russia could resume nuclear missile testing for the first time since 1990.
Should it deliver on that threat, the Kremlin would be in breach of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which it has signed and ratified.
In international diplomacy, "testing" a missile really means detonating one that works somewhere remote (as opposed to the trial-and-error development phase for something like the Burevestnik).
On Friday, Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of Russia's parliament, said MPs would consider whether to revoke the country's ratification of the CTBT.
Mr Erath said any decision by Russia to resume nuclear weapons testing was "much more serious" than the development of Burevestnik.
"If Russia were to start testing, other countries might decide that the de facto moratorium on testing that has existed for the past 30 years is over, and that they can go ahead and test," he said.
"That leads to potential environmental consequences, but an increase, potentially, in nuclear weapons numbers, as testing is an important part of that process."