Russia may be preparing to test the Burevestnik nuclear-powered missile again, which the United States has nicknamed the "flying Chernobyl." Several Western military experts drew attention to this.
The upcoming tests of the Burevestnik missile, the creation of which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in 2018, is evidenced by the intensification of work at the Pankovo test site in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, said Decker Evelet, a nuclear weapons expert at the CNA analytical company.
As Evelet noted, possible tests are also indicated by the fact that the United States has sent a WC-135R radiation reconnaissance aircraft of the Air Force to Novaya Zemlya. Hans Christiansen, director of the Nuclear Information Project of the American Federation of Scientists, also drew attention to the flight of the spy plane.
WC-135R, equipped with sensors to track nuclear tests, took off from the British Mildenhall airbase and circled for about 14 hours over the Barents Sea, near the coast of the Murmansk region, west of Novaya Zemlya, writes Newsweek with reference to FlightRadar data.
The publication indicates that according to American intelligence as of October 2023, Russia tested the Burevestnik 13 times, allegedly, all attempts ended unsuccessfully.
EADaily adds: in September 2024, American researchers made a statement that Russia was preparing to deploy a cruise missile with a Burevestnik nuclear power plant, which was first announced on March 1, 2018 in his message to the Federal Assembly by Russian President Vladimir Putin. As proof, analysts of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) cited changes in satellite images of the closed arsenal of the 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense (GUMO) of Russia near the settlement of Vologda-20, where, indeed, there is one of such storage facilities, next to which construction was underway, visible from space.