The press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov urged to treat the publication of the CNN channel about Moscow’s plans to resume testing of the cruise missile of unlimited range with the Burevestnik nuclear power plant in the Arctic “with a large margin of confidence”.
“With regard to the publication of CNN, here we would suggest, let’s say, with a large gap in confidence in the reliability of such news to treat and be guided by the official information that comes from the Russian side,” Peskov told reporters on Wednesday, October 21.
On the eve of CNN, with reference to satellite images of Planet Labs, Russia reported that Russia was allegedly preparing to resume testing of an unlimited-range cruise missile with a nuclear power plant “Burevestnik” at a test site on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The pictures show the landfill in the village of Pankovo.
Experts from the Middlebury Institute for International Studies in Monterey, Michael Duitsman and Jeffrey Lewis, told the TV channel that Russia stopped testing the rocket after 2018, when the test site was closed, but, according to them, new satellite photos “show that the pause is over.”
Two US officials told CNN that Russia is preparing to test missiles as part of its advanced weapons program.
In September 2019, the American media, citing sources, wrote that US intelligence believes that Russia is stepping up work on cruise missiles of unlimited range with the Burevestnik power plant and plans to put them into service within six years.
The decision to start the development of the Russian intercontinental cruise missile of unlimited range with the Burevestnik nuclear power plant was made in December 2001 after Washington’s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. For the first time, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the appearance of such weapons in a message to the Federal Assembly on March 1, 2018. The rocket got its name from the results of an open vote held on the website of the Ministry of Defense.