Waching daily Mar 31 2018

Putin's Easter missile threat

VLADIMIR Putin's war of words with the West

escalated into war games yesterday.

In a show of force, the Russian president demonstrated his fearsome new Sarmat missile.

Dubbed Satan 2 by Nato, it can travel at 20 times the speed of sound and carry 12 nuclear

warheads up to 6,000 miles.

The test launch, shown on an "Easter message" video from the Russian defence ministry, came

as Vladimir Putin ordered further cuts to Britain's diplomatic ranks in Moscow.

Meanwhile police in Salisbury are closing in on the gang behind the nerve agent poisoning

of double agent Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, which has led to tit-for-tat expulsions.

In the video, the Satan 2 missile emerges from an underground silo, pauses as if hovering

above the ground, and then speeds away in a cloud of white smoke.

The launch was at the snow-covered Plesetsk spaceport in the northern Archangel province

of Russia close to the Arctic Circle.

The new intercontinental ballistic missile was hailed by the Russian president as being

able to fly over the North or South Poles and strike any target in the world.

"No defence systems will be able to withstand it," Putin said during his state-of-the-nation

speech earlier this month.

As relations between Moscow and the West hit a new low not seen since the Cold War, the

Russian foreign ministry yesterday gave Britain 30 days to reduce the number of diplomats

in Moscow to the same number that Russia has in London.

The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats in the wake of the Salisbury attack.

So far more than 150 Russian diplomats, some of whom are suspected spies, have been ordered

to return home by countries including the US, Germany, France and Canada.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would retaliate by expelling the same

number of diplomats that each country had ejected.

The ministry said it had summoned the British ambassador yesterday following the "provocative

and unsubstantiated actions by Britain, which instigated the expulsion of Russian diplomats

from various nations for no reason".

The number of British diplomats that will have to leave Russia was not immediately clear.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: "It's regrettable but in light of Russia's previous

behaviour, we anticipated a response.

However, this doesn't change the facts of the matter – the attempted assassination

of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that

the Russian state was culpable.

"Russia is in flagrant breach of international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention and

actions by countries around the world have demonstrated the depth of international concern."

Mr Lavrov spoke of "harsh pressure from the United States and Britain under the pretext

of the so-called Skripal case".

He called for consular access to Yulia Skripal, a Russian citizen, who has recovered sufficiently

to be able to help police investigating the attack.

Russia, he said, was also seeking a meeting with leaders of the Organisation for the Prohibition

of Chemical Weapons to "establish the truth".

Russia and the West are also at loggerheads over interference in the 2016 US presidential

election, cyber attacks, hacking and the war in Syria.

In his speech, Putin boasted: "No one has listened to us.

You listen to us now."

He revealed other weapons his country apparently has in the pipeline, such as an underwater

drone armed with a nuclear warhead powerful enough to sweep away coastal defences and

destroy aircraft carriers, and a nuclearpowered cruise missile that's "invulnerable to

any existing or prospective air and missile defence systems".

The White House responded by saying Putin had merely confirmed what the US already knows

– that Russia has been developing "destabilising weapons systems for over a decade in direct

violations of its treaty obligations".

Expected to go operational in 2021, Satan 2 is capable of wiping out parts of the planet

the size of France or Texas, according to Russian offi cials.

If true it could wipe out an area the size of England and Wales twice over.