Trump rebukes Putin for testing new missiles, tells him to end the war
President Donald Trump rebuked Russia on Monday for testing a new nuclear-capable cruise missile instead of working to end the war in Ukraine — a testy exchange that is indicative of how relations between the countries have worsened in recent weeks.
Russia on Sunday announced a successful test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile called Burevestnik, which Russia says can carry a nuclear warhead and travel for more than 8,000 miles. Russian President Vladimir Putin, dressed in military fatigues, hailed it as “a unique product, unlike anything else in the world.”
When asked by journalists on Air Force One whether he saw the test as nuclear saber rattling, Trump said the United States had a nuclear submarine right off Russia’s coast and it didn’t need to travel 8,000 miles.
“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. A war that should have taken one week is now in its soon-to-be fourth year. That’s what you ought to do instead of testing missiles,” he said.
Russia’s Skyfall cruise missile, as it is known in the U.S., has been under development for several years and has had a number of failed tests. Experts have said it is more a provocation than a major advance in military technology. Putin unveiled six “invincible” nuclear missiles in March 2018, including Burevestnik.
Commenting on Trump’s statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would not be dissuaded from its weapons tests.
“Despite our openness to establishing dialogue with the U.S., Russia and the Russian president are guided by their own national interests. This has been the case, is the case now and will continue to be the case in the future,” Peskov said. He accused the U.S. of “unfriendly actions” toward Russia, which he said “complicated” efforts to improve ties.
After adopting a policy that was much more open toward Russia than his predecessor was and speaking directly with Putin several times, Trump is now expressing frustration with the Russian leader over the lack of resolution to the war in Ukraine. Last week he announced sanctions against Russian oil companies, the first since he took office. Other administration officials have also adopted a firmer tone, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who on Sunday dismissed Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a key interlocutor with the administration, as a “Russian propagandist.”
Dmitriev said in television interviews while visiting the U.S. over the weekend that the new sanctions would not affect Russia’s economy and would only lead to higher American gasoline prices. He denied that Russia had hit civilian targets, including a Kharkiv kindergarten last week, and claimed that a diplomatic solution to the war was reasonably close.
Asked about Dmitriev’s comments, Bessent criticized the journalist for “quoting a Russian propagandist.”
“If you go through and look at every Russian talking point, they seem to use the word, ‘We have immunized the economy against this.’ Well, they haven’t immunized the economy. Their oil earnings are down 20% year over year,” he said. Bloomberg reported the drop earlier this month, due to lower oil prices and a stronger ruble.
Russia’s military commander Gen. Valery Gerasimov on Sunday claimed the Burevestnik missile had flown for 8,700 miles in a 15-hour test Tuesday, and could strike any heavily protected target with “guaranteed accuracy.”
The comments by Putin and Gerasimov on the missile test mark the latest instance of nuclear posturing by Russian officials during the war on Ukraine, which analysts attribute to Russia’s attempts to deter the U.S. and Europe from supporting Ukraine.
The uptick in confrontational rhetoric came after Russia last week rejected Trump’s call to freeze fighting at current battle lines in Ukraine. A phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Oct. 20 led to the cancellation of a planned meeting in Budapest between Trump and Putin.
Arms experts have questioned whether the missile lives up to Moscow’s boasts but have noted it could be a destabilizing factor amid what many see as a new arms race at a time when relations between Moscow and Washington are fragile.
Jeffrey Lewis, a distinguished fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a distinguished scholar on global security at Middlebury College, cast doubt on Russian claims that the missile could not be intercepted. He said the missile “isn’t invincible. It’s a subsonic (~260 m/s) cruise missile. NATO aircraft could intercept it.”
“The problem is that Burevestnik is yet another step in an arms race that offers no victory for either side,” Lewis wrote on X. Previous tests had lasted between four seconds and two minutes, when the engine failed to ignite.
In 2019, a Burevestnik missile sank in the White Sea during a failed test, and an explosion occurred during the recovery, releasing radiation and killing seven people, including nuclear scientists.
Decker Eveleth, a nuclear deterrence analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses military think tank, wrote on X that it was “extremely doubtful that Burevestnik is all that capable a system. A terror weapon, but not much else.”
“Flying the system in a figure 8 for a while doesn’t really prove (it’s) capable of targeting what they want to target,” he added.