Therefore, it is not surprising that Russian officials love to talk about Sarmat’s capabilities. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Sarmat “a truly unique weapon” that “will give food for thought to those who, in the heat of frenzied aggressive rhetoric, are trying to threaten our country.” Dmitry Rogozin, then head of the Russian space agency, called the Sarmat rocket a “superweapon” after its first test flight in 2022.
So far, the unique feature of the Sarmat missile is its tendency to fail. The rocket's first full-scale test flight in 2022 appears to have gone well, but the program has suffered a series of successive setbacks since then, most notably a catastrophic explosion last year that destroyed the underground silo of the Sarmat missile in the north of Russia.
The Sarmat is expected to replace Russia's aging fleet of Ukrainian-built R-36M2 strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the RS-28, sometimes called “Satan II”, is “the product of exclusively Russian industrial cooperation.”
The video of the missile failure last week lacks resolution to confirm whether it was a Sarmat missile or an older model R-36M2, but analysts agree it was most likely a Sarmat. The missile silo used for Friday's test was recently repaired, possibly to be refitted to support Sarmat testing after the destruction of the new missile's northern launch pad last year.
“Work there began in the spring of 2025, after the ice had melted,” wrote Etienne Marcus, a strategic weapons analyst at the French think tank Foundation for Strategic Research. “Urgent repairs” to the missile silo at Dombarovsky confirm the hypothesis that the Sarmat was damaged in last week’s crash, and not the R-36M2, last tested more than 10 years ago. Marcus wrote on X.
“If this is indeed another Sarmatian failure, it would be extremely detrimental to the medium-term future of Russian deterrence,” Marcuse continued. “The obsolete R-36M2 missiles that carry a significant portion of Russia’s strategic warheads, their replacement will be pushed even further into the future, while their maintenance, which was handled by Ukraine until 2014, remains highly uncertain.”
In this photo released by Russian state news agency Sputnik, Russian President Vladimir Putin presides over a Security Council meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on November 5, 2025.
Photo: Gavriil Grigorov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Podvig, a UN researcher who also blogs about Russia's nuclear forces, agrees with Marcuse's findings. Given that the R-36M2 missiles will soon be retired from service, “it is extremely unlikely that the Rocket Forces will want to test launch them,” Podvig wrote on its website. “Sarmat remains.”
This failure adds new uncertainty to the readiness of the Russian nuclear arsenal. If this had actually been a test of one of Russia's older intercontinental ballistic missiles, the result would have raised questions about the dilapidation and obsolescence of the equipment. In the more likely event of a Sarmat test flight, it would be the latest in a series of problems that have delayed its entry into service since 2018.
