A Russian lawmaker went on state TV to say President Vladimir Putin could destroy “the entire East Coast of the U.S.” with only a pair of their Sarmat missiles, known as the Satan 2.
Russian politician Alexie Zhuravlev then said it would only take two of their Satan 2 missiles to destroy the West Coast, according to a report from the British newspaper The Sun.
“Four missiles and there’ll be nothing left,” he said. “They think the mushroom cloud will be taller than a high rise. That mushroom cloud will be visible from Mexico.”
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Sarmat missile is about 115 feet long with a range of more than 11,000 miles. It can reportedly load up to 15 large warheads.
“Putin-cronies have claimed the Russian military could have as many as 50 Sarmat missiles in their arsenal, and have even bizarrely threatened to use them to drown the UK in a radioactive tsunami,” according to the newspaper.
Each nuclear warhead is more than 100 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. Mr. Putin has claimed they could penetrate current anti-missile defense systems.
The Russian lawmaker also defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the force was necessary to purge the nation’s “incurable” population. Mr. Zhuralev said that two million Ukrainians should “be de-Nazified, which means to be destroyed.”