US believes Russia had failed intercontinental ballistic missile test around when Biden was in Ukraine

Russia carried out a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears to have failed around the time President Joe Biden was in Ukraine on Monday, according to two US officials familiar with the matter, reported from CNN.

Russia notified the United States in advance of the launch through deconfliction lines, one official said. Another official said that the test did not pose a risk to the United States and that the US did not view the test as an anomaly or an escalation.

The test of the heavy SARMAT missile – nicknamed the Satan II in the West and capable of delivering multiple nuclear warheads – appears to have failed, officials said. It has been successfully tested before and had this one worked, US officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would have highlighted the test in his State of the Nation address on Tuesday.

Putin has announced successful ICBM tests in the past, including last April, just months after Russia invaded Ukraine. That test was also for the SARMAT missile which was first unveiled in 2016 and said by Russian state media to have a range exceeding 11,000 kilometers (6,835 miles). The missile can carry a warhead weighing 100 tons and was designed as a successor to the R-36M Voevoda ICBM.

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