Putin Reminds West That Russia Has World's Most Advanced Nuclear Weapons

Russian President Vladimir Putin during a Wednesday meeting of government ministers and military leaders took the opportunity to remind all other nations, especially the West, that Russia possesses the world's most advanced nuclear weapons.

He introduced in the public statements that "special attention" must be paid to the continued development of the country's nuclear triad, in reference to the combination of land-based delivery methods, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers.

"Now, the share of the state-of-the-art weapon systems and equipment in our strategic nuclear forces comes to 95%," Putin said, according to state media translation. He added Russia is making "good progress" on the nuclear readiness front.

"That is the highest level among all of the world’s nuclear powers," Putin then emphasized. He said:

Today, our task is to form a new long-term program for the entire complex of systems and weapons models, including, first of all, of course, promising ones, to make maximum use of the experience of the special military operation (the war against Ukraine - ed.), various regional conflicts, and, of course, it is important to take into account global trends in the development of military technologies.

He also assessed general military readiness, saying further: "The dominant force in conducting modern military operations of any scale and intensity remains the ground forces. And it is important to increase their combat capabilities in the shortest possible time."

Currently, full nuclear triad capabilities are possessed only by three countries in the world — the USA, China and Russia.

American military leaders have tended to acknowledge the diversity and advancement of Russia's nuclear-delivery systems. One of the latest new systems, the Sarmat ICBM, is boasted by Kremlin sources as being able to travel 11,000 miles (about 18,000km) with a payload of around ten tons.

A month ago, Putin made an unprecedented allegation. He asserted that Ukraine's Western supporters in NATO were essentially trying to bait Moscow into deploying nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Putin emphasized that Russia exercised restraint in this matter.

"They wanted to provoke us, wanted us to make mistakes," the Russian leader had asserted in the early May Rossiya-1 interview. "And there was no need to use the weapons that you mentioned. I hope that it won’t be necessary," he added.

"We have enough capabilities and means to finish what we started in 2022 with the result that Russia needs," Putin concluded. He emphasized that Russia is able to carry through with its military goals without resorting to nuclear arms.