Satellite imagery and maritime notices indicate Russia may be preparing a test of its 9M730 Burevestnik nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile at the Pankovo range on Novaya Zemlya, just before President Vladimir Putin is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Alaska later today.
Independent analysts at the Middlebury Institute and CNA identified activity at the site consistent with past test campaigns, including equipment movements and support vessels. A Western security source cited by Reuters assessed a launch could occur within days.
The timing coincides with Kremlin signals that Moscow wants to revisit strategic arms control with Washington. Putin has trailed the idea of a new treaty framework as part of wider talks on Ukraine and European security, setting the stage for a political backdrop in which high-profile weapons demonstrations could be used to emphasise capability.
Burevestnik (NATO designation SSC-X-9 “Skyfall”) is designed to use a compact nuclear reactor to provide effectively extreme range and prolonged airborne loiter, with a nuclear warhead as its payload. Publicly available records indicate a poor test history since initial trials in 2016, with only limited successes reported. In August 2019, a recovery operation linked by U.S. assessments to a crashed Burevestnik prototype ended in an explosion near Nyonoksa, Arkhangelsk region, killing five specialists and briefly elevating local radiation readings.
Technically, the programme faces well-documented hurdles. Miniaturising a reactor to fit within a cruise-missile fuselage while ensuring stable control, adequate cooling and shielding presents challenges without clear historical precedent. Analysts have noted that any meaningful radiation shielding would add prohibitive mass, while an unshielded or lightly shielded reactor raises safety and environmental risks during testing, flight, and potential failure.
Novaya Zemlya, the Soviet Union’s principal historic nuclear test ground and now Russia’s only active site of this type, has seen periodic refurbishment and activity in recent years. The current build-up around the Pankovo strip and adjacent maritime zones aligns with earlier Burevestnik test patterns observed by open-source researchers using commercial satellite constellations.
The strategic context is unsettled. New START—the last remaining US–Russia strategic arms treaty, signed in 2010—limits each side to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads (with each deployed heavy bomber counted as one warhead), 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments, and a total of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and heavy bombers.
Russia announced a suspension of participation in February 2023 but has said it would continue to observe numerical limits; the treaty is due to expire in February 2026 absent replacement. U.S. government reporting and independent analyses warn that, without a successor arrangement, verification will lapse and force structures could drift upwards.
At the intermediate range, the 1987 INF Treaty collapsed in 2019 after Washington concluded Moscow had fielded the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile in violation of treaty limits, a position publicly backed by NATO allies at the time and denied by Russia. The demise of INF removed constraints on land-based missiles between 500 and 5,500 km, spurring renewed debate over deployments in Europe and Asia.
Against this backdrop, Russian discussion points ahead of Alaska appear to include folding constraints on U.S. intermediate-range systems into a broader strategic framework—an approach that would formally link categories previously treated in separate instruments. U.S. officials and experts have historically resisted such linkage, noting that Russia already fields comparable systems and that any new deal would require robust verification.
Experts remain divided on Burevestnik’s military utility. Advocates in Moscow argue that an unpredictable, long-endurance nuclear cruise missile could circumvent missile defences. Critics point to detection risks from any radiological signature, the subsonic cruise profile’s vulnerability to layered air defences, and the environmental and safety costs evidenced by past incidents. The balance of open-source evidence to date suggests the programme’s demonstration value has outweighed its operational maturity.
If a test proceeds, it will underline the degraded state of the arms-control regime and the signalling function of strategic systems in diplomacy. Whether it shifts negotiating positions in Alaska is uncertain; it will, however, reinforce the case—voiced by both government and independent analysts—for credible limits, transparency, and verification to manage escalation risks as New START’s expiry approaches.
