Trump Warns Putin After Russia’s Nuke Test

President Trump issued a chilling warning to Vladimir Putin Monday after the Russian tyrant boasted about testing his country’s new “invincible” nuclear missile.

“They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shore,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday as he prepared to travel to Japan.

He was speaking after Putin on Sunday hailed an 8,700-mile, 15-hour test flight for Russia’s “unique” nuclear-powered missile, dubbed a “flying Chernobyl,” which the country says could strike targets in the US.

The Burevestnik missile is a “unique product, unlike anything else in the world,” Putin — dressed in military fatigues — claimed on Sunday in remarks reported by Russian state media.

“We need to identify potential uses and begin preparing the infrastructure for deploying this weapon in our armed forces,” he added.

President Trump was not impressed by Russia’s saber-rattling.”We test missiles all the time, but you know, we do have a submarine, a nuclear submarine. We don’t need to go 8,000 miles,” he said.

“They’re not playing games with us. We’re not playing games with them either,” President Trump continued, before repeating his demand that Putin end the war in Ukraine.

“I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying. By the way, he ought to get the war ended. A war that should have taken one week is now in its, soon, fourth year. That’s what he ought to do instead of testing missiles,” Trump said.

He was speaking after a planned meeting with his Russian counterpart collapsed.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has upped his calls for the US to supply his country with long-range missiles to force Putin to make peace.

Zelensky praised President Trump’s latest sanctions on Russia, saying they “will make a difference,” but warned that more pressure was needed to bring an end to the conflict raging since February 2022.

“President Trump is concerned about escalation. But I think that if there are no negotiations, there will be an escalation anyway. I think that if Putin doesn’t stop, we need something to stop him. Sanctions is one such weapon, but we also need long-range missiles,” President Zelensky told Axios Sunday.

The Burevestnik, known by NATO as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, is a ground-launched nuclear-powered cruise missile that Russia’s military claims is able to evade Western air defenses.

Due to running on nuclear power, it is able to cover far greater distances than conventional missiles, according to the Kremlin.

“It is a tiny flying Chernobyl,” General Gerasimov said during a briefing, referencing the Soviet nuclear disaster in 1986.

The weapon has been in the works for years, but Sunday’s news was an unwelcome development.

“This is a bad development. It is one more science fiction weapon that is going to be destabilizing and hard to address in arms control,” Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at Middlebury College, told UPI.

However, experts have poured scorn on claims made about the missile’s capabilities by Russia’s most senior general, Valery Gerasimov, following the Oct. 21 flight.