Russia

Russia’s key Black Sea oil port of Tuapse has suspended all fuel exports after Ukrainian drones struck its infrastructure on November 2, igniting a fire and damaging loading facilities. The attack also forced the nearby Rosneft-operated refinery to halt crude processing, according to industry sources and LSEG ship tracking data.

Tuapse is one of Russia’s major export hubs for refined oil products, including naphtha, diesel, and fuel oil. The port plays a crucial role in supplying markets such as China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Turkey. The refinery, capable of processing around 240,000 barrels of oil per day, exports most of its production.

Why It Matters

The suspension underscores Ukraine’s ongoing campaign to weaken Russia’s wartime economy by targeting energy infrastructure deep inside Russian territory. These strikes not only disrupt export revenues but also stretch Russia’s military and logistical resources. For Moscow, losing Tuapse an export-oriented refinery on the Black Sea adds pressure to its already strained oil supply chain amid international sanctions and logistical bottlenecks.

The attack also signals Kyiv’s growing drone capabilities, with long-range operations increasingly aimed at strategic Russian energy sites. As the conflict nears its fourth year, energy infrastructure on both sides has become a critical front in the economic war underpinning the battlefield.

The regional administration in Tuapse confirmed the drone strike and subsequent fire but offered few details. State oil company Rosneft and Russia’s port agency did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

According to data reviewed by LSEG, three tankers were docked during the attack, loading naphtha, diesel, and fuel oil. All vessels were later moved offshore to anchor safely near the port. Before the incident, Tuapse had been expected to increase oil product exports in November.

Ukraine has not directly claimed responsibility for the specific attack but reiterated that its drone strikes aim to erode Russia’s capacity to finance its invasion through energy exports.

What’s Next

Repair timelines for the Tuapse refinery and port infrastructure remain unclear, but the temporary halt is expected to disrupt Russia’s short-term fuel exports and trading flows in the Black Sea region. The strike may prompt Moscow to bolster air defenses along its southern coast and diversify export routes to reduce vulnerability.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is expected to continue leveraging drone warfare to target high-value Russian infrastructure as part of its asymmetric strategy to offset Moscow’s battlefield advantages.

With information from an exclusive Reuters report.

Kyiv, Ukraine – The collective West is scared of Moscow’s new, nuclear-powered cruise missile because it can reach anywhere on Earth, bypassing the most sophisticated air and missile defence systems, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has claimed.

“They’re afraid of what we’ll show to them next,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the RIA Novosti news agency on Sunday.

Days earlier, she said Moscow was “forced” to develop and test the cruise missile, which is named the Burevestnik, meaning storm petrel – a type of seabird, in response to NATO’s hostility towards Russia.

“The development can be characterised as forced and takes place to maintain strategic balance,” she was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying. Russia “has to respond to NATO’s increasingly destabilising actions in the field of missile defence”.

With much pomp, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday handed state awards to Burevestnik’s developers.

Also awarded were the designers of Poseidon, an underwater nuclear-powered torpedo which Putin has also claimed has been successfully tested.

Russia says Poseidon can carry nuclear weapons that cause radioactive tsunamis, wiping out huge coastal areas. The “super torpedo” can move at the speed of 200km/h (120mph) and zigzag its way to avoid interception, it says.

“In terms of flight range, the Burevestnik … has surpassed all known missile systems in the world,” Putin said in his speech at the Kremlin. “Same as any other nuclear power, Russia is developing its nuclear potential, its strategic potential … What we are talking about now is the work announced a long time ago.”

But military and nuclear experts are sceptical about the efficiency and lethality of the new weapons.

It is not unusual for Russia to flaunt its arsenal as its onslaught in Ukraine continues. Analysts say rather than scaring its critics, Moscow’s announcements are merely a scare tactic to dissuade Western powers from supporting Kyiv.

“There’s nothing revolutionary about,” the Burevestnik, said Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project at the the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.

“It can fly long and far, and there’s some novelty about it, but there’s nothing to back [Putin’s claim] that it can absolutely change everything,” Podvig told Al Jazeera. “One can’t say that it is invincible and can triumph over everything.”

The Burevestnik’s test is part of Moscow’s media stratagem of intimidating the West when the real situation on the front lines in Ukraine is desperate, according to a former Russian diplomat.

The missile is “not a technical breakthrough but a product of propaganda and desperation”, Boris Bondarev, who quit his Russian Foreign Ministry job to protest against the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, wrote in an opinion piece published by the Moscow Times.

“It symbolises not strength but weakness – the Kremlin’s lack of any tools of political influence other than threats.”

Few details about ‘unique’ missile

The problem is that officials have so far unveiled very little about the Burevestnik, which NATO has dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall – a missile that has a nuclear reactor allegedly capable of keeping it in the air indefinitely.

On October 26, when fatigues-clad Putin announced Burevestnik’s successful test, he was accompanied by his top general Valery Gerasimov.

“This is a unique item; no one else in the world has it,” said Putin, in televised remarks.

Gerasimov said the Burevestnik had flown 14,000km (8,700 miles) in 15 hours during a recent test. It can manoeuvre and loiter midair, and unleash its nuclear load with “guaranteed precision” and at “any distance”.

“There’s a lot of work ahead” before the missile is mass-produced, Putin concluded, adding the test’s “key objectives have been achieved”.

A Ukrainian military expert ridiculed the Kremlin’s claims.

“Much of the news report is fake, the (Burevestnik) missile is subsonic, it can be detected and destroyed by missile defence systems,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of Ukraine’s general staff of armed forces who specialised in air and missile defence, told Al Jazeera.

As for the Poseidon nuclear drone, it is too destructive – and can be used only as a second-strike, retaliatory weapon after the start of a nuclear war, experts warned. As with the Burevestnik, the lack of detailed information about Poseidon casts doubt upon the Kremlin’s claims.

Trump decries ‘inappropriate’ tests

The announcements followed Washington’s scrapping of United States President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Budapest, Hungary.

Trump has called the Burevestnik’s test “inappropriate” and ordered the Pentagon to resume the testing of nuclear weapons and missiles.

But ahead of next year’s midterm elections, he may seek to show how he forced the Kremlin to stop hostilities in Ukraine.

“Trump will have to play with pressure on Russia,” Romanenko said. “Hopefully, the circumstances will force Trump to act.”

What Putin has not mentioned is that only two of the Burevestnik’s dozen tests, starting in 2019, have been successful.

Its 2019 launch near the White Sea in northwestern Russia killed at least five nuclear experts after a radioactive explosion, Western experts said at the time. Russia’s state nuclear agency acknowledged the deaths, but officials and media reports do not provide video footage, detailed photos or other specifics of the Burevestnik and its testing route – making Putin’s latest claims hard to corroborate or disprove.

Western experts were able to identify the Burevestnik’s probable deployment site in September. Known as Vologda-20 or Chebsara, it is believed to be 475km (295 miles) north of Moscow and has nine launch pads under construction, the Reuters news agency reported last year.

The missile’s capabilities have divided military analysts.

“In operation, the Burevestnik would carry a nuclear warhead (or warheads), circle the globe at low altitude, avoid missile defences, and dodge terrain; and drop the warhead(s) at a difficult-to-predict location (or locations),” the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US nonprofit security group said in a 2019 report after the missile’s first somewhat successful test.

A year later, the US Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center said, if brought into service, Burevestnik would give Moscow a “unique weapon with intercontinental-range capability”.

‘Burevestnik is a mystification’

Others doubt the missile’s functionality.

“Burevestnik is a mystification for the whole seven-and-a-half years since it was first announced,” Pavel Luzin, a visiting scholar at Tufts University in Massachusetts, told Al Jazeera.

“It’s impossible to create a reactor that is compact and powerful enough to ensure a cruise missile’s movement,” Luzin said. “This is a basic physics textbook.”

Moscow claims that Burevestnik utilises nuclear propulsion instead of turbojet or turbofan engines used in cruise or ballistic missiles.

But Luzin said the smallest nuclear reactors used to power satellites weighed 1 metric tonne, supplying several kilowatts of energy – roughly equal to what a regular household consumes – while emitting some 150kw of thermal energy.

The experimental nuclear reactors developed in the 1950s and the 60s for aircraft weighed many tonnes and were the size of a railway carriage, he said.

An average engine for a cruise missile weighs up to 80kg, generates 4kw for onboard electric and electronic devices, and about 1 megawatt of energy for propelling the missile, he said.

Other analysts think that Burevestnik’s nuclear engine can function, but do not consider the weapon groundbreaking.

Here are the key events from day 1,350 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, November 5:

Fighting

• Russian and Ukrainian troops have fought battles in the ruins of Pokrovsk, a transport and logistics hub in eastern Ukraine, with Ukraine’s military reporting fierce fighting under way in a part of the city that was key for Kyiv’s front-line logistics.

  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he visited troops fighting near the eastern city of Dobropillia, where Ukrainian forces are conducting a counteroffensive against Russian troops.

  Russia struck civilian energy and port infrastructure in a massive overnight drone attack on Ukraine’s southern region of Odesa, the region’s governor said in a post on the Telegram messaging app, adding that rescuers extinguished fires and there were no casualties.

• Ukraine has struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement. The extent of damage to the Lukoil refinery in the town of Kstovo, which supplies the Russian military, was not immediately known.

• Ukraine’s military also said that its drones had caused “considerable damage” to a petrochemical plant in Bashkortostan in central Russia. Regional authorities reported an attack on the Sterlitamak petrochemical plant, but added that the facility was still operating.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that allows the use of military reservists to guard oil refineries after Ukrainian drone strikes have led to fuel shortages in some regions of the country.

Weapons

• Putin lauded his country’s development of new weapons, including the Burevestnik cruise missile and Poseidon super torpedo, describing them as faster and more effective, with the Burevestnik said to be capable of reaching more than three times the speed of sound.
• Putin also said that Russia was proceeding with the mass production of its Oreshnik missile, which Moscow said was first used to attack Ukraine in November 2024.

• Zelenskyy again urged the United States to remain open to supplying Kyiv with long-range weapons for its war effort against Russia’s invasion, while also calling for more sanctions on Moscow’s gas and nuclear sectors.

• Norwegian munitions maker Nammo has signed a letter of intent with a Ukrainian industrial partner to produce, develop and sell ammunition in Ukraine, Norway’s government said.

Sanctions

• Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil and gas company Kazmunaygaz and the sanctioned Russian oil and gas firm Lukoil are continuing work on joint projects in accordance with contractual obligations, despite Western sanctions, Russia’s Interfax agency reported.

• Japan’s investment firm Marubeni plans to follow the guidance of the Japanese government regarding its involvement in Russia’s Sakhalin-1 oil project after the US government sanctioned the project’s key shareholder, Rosneft, Marubeni’s CEO, Masayuki Omoto, told a briefing in Tokyo.

• Turkish fuel supplier Guzel Enerji has announced that it will raise the price of diesel after Western sanctions on Russian oil companies led to issues with supply and increased insurance and financing costs, according to a document seen by Reuters news agency.

Politics and diplomacy

• Zelenskyy called on Hungarian leader Viktor Orban to stop blocking Kyiv’s bid to join the European Union.
• The European Commission said that the EU could welcome new member countries as early as 2030, as it praised Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova for their progress on reforms needed to join the bloc.
• The EU may need to come up with a bridging solution to keep Ukraine financed in early 2026 if a deal on an EU loan, based on frozen Russian assets held in EU accounts, continues to be delayed, European Commissioner for Economy and Productivity Valdis Dombrovskis said.

• Germany plans to increase its financial aid to Ukraine by about 3 billion euros ($3.5bn) next year, a spokesperson for the Federal Ministry of Finance said. Germany has already contributed about 40 billion euros ($46bn) since the full-scale Russian invasion began in 2022.

• Maxim Oreshkin, a deputy chief of staff in Russia’s presidential administration, will lead Moscow’s delegation to the G20 summit in South Africa later this month, according to a decree signed by Putin. The Kremlin earlier said that Putin, who is facing an International Criminal Court warrant for arrest, would not travel to the summit in Johannesburg on November 22-23.

• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is constantly working as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia over Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, including in Zaporizhzhia, IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said.

Russia has reserves of 15 rare-earth metals totalling 28.7 million tonnes, according to the Natural Resources Ministry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his cabinet to draw up a roadmap for the extraction of rare-earth minerals by December 1, as global interest in the metals heightens due to their use in modern technologies and a desire to reduce reliance on the Chinese-dominated market.

In a list of tasks for ministers published on the Kremlin website, Putin on Tuesday also ordered the cabinet to take measures to develop transport links at Russia’s borders with China and North Korea.

Rare earths – used in smartphones, electric vehicles and weapons systems – have taken on vital strategic importance in international trade.

In April, United States President Donald Trump signed a deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that will give the US preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals deals and fund investment in the country’s reconstruction.

Russia says it is also interested in partnering with the US on rare-earth projects.

In March, Putin’s investment envoy – Kirill Dmitriev – claimed that Russia and the US had started talks on rare-earth metals projects in Russia, and that some US companies had expressed an interest in them. However, prospects between the US and Russia have been held up by a lack of progress towards ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

China, the dominant producer of rare earths, has hit back at US tariffs this year by placing restrictions on rare earths exports. Its almost total global control has focused Washington’s attention on developing its own supplies.

Putin’s order – a summary of action points from a Far Eastern Economic Forum he attended in Vladivostok in September – did not go into detail about Russia’s rare earths plan.

The US Geological Survey estimates Russia’s reserves of rare earth metals at 3.8 million tonnes, but Moscow has far higher estimates.

According to the Natural Resources Ministry, Russia has reserves of 15 rare-earth metals totalling 28.7 million tonnes, as of January 2023.

But even accounting for this possible margin of error, Russia still only accounts for a tiny fraction of global stockpiles.

Among other points, Putin also instructed the government to develop “multimodal transport and logistics centres” on the Chinese and North Korean borders.

Putin said the locations should include two existing railway bridges linking Russia and China and a planned new bridge to North Korea, which he said must be commissioned in 2026.

Both of Russia’s far eastern neighbours have deepened economic ties with Moscow since Western countries imposed sanctions on it over its war in Ukraine.

Berlin, Germany – Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has played down Western concerns that Russia is preparing for further conflicts in Europe and suggested the European Union should have a concrete peace plan in place for Ukraine amid efforts by the United States to end the war.

Rama, speaking to Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the Berlin Global Dialogue conference late last month, said it would be “completely stupid” of any country to attack EU or NATO members.

“Russia will not attack Albania and Russia will not attack any other European country,” he said. “NATO is ready for any kind of aggression. NATO has nobody and nothing to fear because it’s the strongest army in the world so far.”

Twenty-three out of 27 EU member states are NATO members. Albania is part of NATO and has been an EU candidate country since 2014.

“The EU is being provoked a lot by Russia,” said Rama. “Countries on the border with Russia are being provoked on a daily basis … the EU is defending itself and thinking of defending itself better.”

Since early September, several European countries, including Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Romania, have blamed Russia for a series of suspected drone incursions. Tensions soared further on September 19, when NATO said it intercepted three Russian MiG-31 jets suspected of entering Estonian airspace, a claim denied by Moscow.

Last month, German foreign intelligence chief Martin Jager warned lawmakers that to grow its “sphere of influence further westward into Europe”, Russia would “shy away from direct military confrontation with NATO if necessary”.

Moscow has dismissed accusations that it has deliberately sent drones into European airspace, blaming those countries for stoking hysteria.

EU’s lack of a peace plan ‘looks very strange’

Rama’s government has been vocal in its criticism of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and supports EU sanctions on Moscow.

But he told Al Jazeera, “The fact that the EU does not have a peace plan looks very strange to me.”

As US President Donald Trump attempts to secure a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, Rama said the EU should “think about having its own diplomacy in action to promote its own vision of peace”.

He also suggested EU officials should “find a way to talk to the Russians” to end the war.

Late on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had not seen a European plan to end the war, according to Interfax news agency.

Rama claimed that Albania, which has not reported any Russian drone sightings, feels little pressure despite the apparent incursions, as Eastern European countries bordering Russia are on high security alert.

“I’m Albanian,” Rama said. “We have no fears … There is no room for Russian hostilities in Albania because there is no sympathy for Russia.”

Before the suspected airspace violations, Moscow had long been accused of engaging in “hybrid warfare”, using unconventional methods such as cyberattacks or disinformation campaigns to drive a wedge between EU countries. The drone incursions, the bloc says, are part of that tactic.

There are fears that Russia’s war could spill over into the Western Balkans, comprising – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, self-declared republic of Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – home to deep-rooted tensions.

On October 22, when Rama’s British counterpart Keir Starmer hosted him and the five other Western Balkans leaders, the premier of the United Kingdom called the region “Europe’s crucible – the place where the security of our continent is put to the test”.

The six nations are at varying levels of negotiations with the EU regarding accession, attempting to reform sectors from their judiciaries to social welfare departments in order to join the bloc.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently praised the progress made by Montenegro and Albania.

In Tirana on October 25, in a news conference alongside Rama, she said Albania is on “the right track towards the European Union”, adding, “there has been a stunning and outstanding record speed acceleration since 2022”.

Rama agreed, telling Al Jazeera that the EU’s sense of openness in welcoming the Balkan nations has improved since the Ukraine war began.

Here are the key events from day 1,349 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, November 4:

Fighting

• Russia said on Monday that its troops had advanced in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, an important transport and logistics hub that they have been trying to capture for more than a year, but Ukraine said its forces were holding on.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters that Pokrovsk remained under severe pressure, though Russian troops had made no gains in the past day.
• He also said that Russia was massing troops by the nearby town of Dobropillia, where Kyiv’s forces advanced earlier this year in a successful counteroffensive. He described the situation in Dobropillia as complicated.
• Ukraine’s 7th Rapid Response Corps said that Ukrainian forces had thwarted a Russian attempt to cut off a supply route to Pokrovsk from Rodynske, to the north.
• Elsewhere, Russia said its troops had also attacked Ukrainian forces near another eastern city, Kupiansk, and dislodged them from four fortified positions in the industrial zone on the left bank of the Oskol River. Zelenskyy said that up to 60 Russian soldiers remained in Kupiansk, and that Ukrainian forces were trying to clear them.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces had carried out heavy overnight strikes on a Ukrainian military airfield, a military equipment repair base and military-industrial facilities, as well as gas infrastructure facilities that supported them.
• Ukraine’s military said it hit an oil refinery in Russia’s Saratov region, adding that a successful strike and resulting fire had been recorded on one of the refining facilities.
• Ukraine also said that it had hit Russian military logistical facilities in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk.

Weapons

• Zelenskyy announced that Kyiv will set up offices for arms exports and joint weapons production in Berlin and Copenhagen this year.

• Zelenskyy added that Ukraine plans to launch mass production of its domestically produced missiles – the Flamingo and Ruta – by the end of this year.
• He also said that a Ukrainian delegation would visit Washington, DC, next week for further talks on a US-Ukraine drone deal, which Kyiv hopes will bolster ties with the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Politics and diplomacy

• The European Commission (EC) said in a draft text that Ukraine is showing “remarkable commitment” to joining the European Union, but must reverse recent negative trends in the fight against corruption and accelerate rule of law reforms, according to the Reuters news agency.
• The agency reported that the EC also said that Kyiv needed to make more progress on judicial independence, fighting organised crime and respecting civil society.
• Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin departed for a two-day visit to China, which the Kremlin said is significant and includes planned talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Economy

• Zelenskyy said Ukraine still needs to raise $750m to secure gas imports for the upcoming winter. The government wants to increase natural gas imports by about 30 percent after Russia sharply intensified its attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector in recent weeks, focusing on gas facilities.

Here are the key events from day 1,348 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Monday, November 3, 2025:

Fighting

• Russia fired a wave of drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight on Sunday, killing at least 15 people, including two children, the Kyiv Independent reported.
• The attacks cut electricity to nearly 60,000 residents in the southern front-line region of Zaporizhia, Ukrainian authorities said.
• Ukrainian forces launched a drone attack on one of Russia’s main Black Sea oil ports, Tuapse, causing a fire and damaging at least two foreign vessels there, according to local officials.
• The overnight attack on Sunday forced the temporary closure of dozens of Russian airports, chiefly in the country’s south and west, for safety reasons, Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsiya said on Telegram.

Weapons

• United States President Donald Trump said that he is not considering a deal that would allow Ukraine to obtain the long-range Tomahawk missiles for use against Russia.

Sanctions

• Turkiye’s largest oil refineries are buying more non-Russian oil in response to the latest Western sanctions on Russia, two people with direct knowledge of the matter and several industry sources told the Reuters news agency. Turkiye is a major buyer of Russian crude, along with China and India.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the continuing deadly Russian attacks on his country proved that Moscow was aiming to “inflict harm” on civilians, and announced that Kyiv had beefed up its air defences in response.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “painstaking work” on the details of a possible agreement is needed to resolve the war in Ukraine, and not a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The United States and China have declared a truce in the trade war launched by US President Donald Trump in April, argues Evan Medeiros, former US National Security Council director for China.

Medeiros tells host Steve Clemons that the deal reached between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump resolves the urgent trade issues between the two sides – tariff rates, soya beans and rare earth minerals – but China “remains committed to ensuring that Russia doesn’t lose” in Ukraine.

The US has more than 200,000 soldiers surrounding China, Medeiros adds, but Washington knows that “nobody wants to choose between the US and China.”

Russia has said that it conducted a long-awaited test of its mysterious Burevestnik (also known to NATO as SSC-X-9 Skyfall) cruise missile last week, claiming that it flew for 8,700 miles. The missile, which is nuclear-powered, is said to have remained in the air for around 15 hours. For the time being, we don’t know if those statements are factually accurate, and details about how the missile actually works remain very scarce. However, the claimed test has led to boasts about the missile’s performance from Russian President Vladimir Putin, while his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, called upon Putin to end the war in Ukraine “instead of testing missiles.”

Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, told Putin yesterday that a successful test of the Burevestnik was carried out on October 21. Gerasimov said that the 15-hour flight “is not the [maximum] limit” for the missile. Regardless, if true, this would appear to be the first long-endurance test of the missile.

In response to Gerasimov’s remarks, Putin commented: “I remember vividly when we announced that we were developing such a weapon, even highly qualified specialists told me that, yes, it was a good and worthy goal, but unrealizable in the near future. This was the opinion of specialists, I repeat, highly qualified. And now the decisive tests have been completed.”

The Russian president was referring to the revelation of the Burevestnik’s existence back in 2018. It was one of six ‘super weapons’ that also included hypersonic weapons and a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed torpedo.

People are asking what’s the purpose of Burevestnik and why develop a system that is very much useless as a weapon. The answer has always been right there, in the 1 March 2018 address. Russian president has always wanted to say these words. The rest doesn’t matter really. pic.twitter.com/0Q7JUGBqo3

— Pavel Podvig (@russianforces) October 26, 2025

Of all these weapons, the Burevestnik has long been among the most intriguing.

As TWZ described when it was first announced, the basic concept of a nuclear-powered cruise missile is by no means new.

After all, in the 1960s, the U.S. Air Force explored a similar idea with its Supersonic Low Altitude Missile, or SLAM. This weapon employed a nuclear-powered ramjet along with conventional rocket boosters to kickstart the system. Once at the appropriate speed, the engine would blow air over the reactor, which could have enough fuel to operate for weeks or months on end, and then force it out of an exhaust nozzle to produce thrust.

A missile of this kind has extreme endurance, not limited by conventional fuel onboard as all other air-breathing missiles are, can be wildly unpredictable and tough to defend against.

While we don’t know what kind of nuclear propulsion the Burevestnik uses, provided this kind of technology can be made reliable, the implications are significant.

Of the latest test, Gerasimov said: “The technical characteristics of the Burevestnik generally allow it to be used with guaranteed accuracy against highly protected targets at any distance.” He added that: “vertical and horizontal maneuvers were completed,” something that would allow the missile to “bypass anti-missile and air defense systems.”

As we have surmised before, an operational Burevestnik would likely cruise at high subsonic speed on a circuitous route at extremely low altitude, helping it to avoid surface-based early warning systems and missile defense interceptors.

Using a two-way datalink, it should be possible to adapt the Burevestnik’s course in flight to further confuse an opponent or actively counter any attempts to intercept the missile.

The American SLAM concept involved a payload of multiple nuclear warheads that could be dropped on different targets along the way, but again, the warhead of the Russian missile remains mysterious. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, claimed that the latest test involved a warhead. If true, it would almost certainly involve a mock warhead, without the nuclear material, which would serve to test fuzing and detonation, for example.

Congratulations to all Russia’s friends on the successful test of the unlimited-range Burevestnik (Storm petrel) cruise missile with a nuclear engine and warhead ⚡️😃

— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) October 26, 2025

Nevertheless, a technically perfected Burevestnik remains a somewhat questionable goal given previous problems with the program. At the same time, there remains the very real issue of safety and environmental hazards. We will dive deeper into both these factors later.

Returning to last week’s test, Gerasimov didn’t say where it took place, but it’s widely assumed to have been in Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in northern Russia, situated in the Arctic Ocean, and used for many previous weapons tests.

Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) orders issued for October 21 showed a large area around Novaya Zemlya closed off, corresponding to a Russian missile test or live-fire exercise.

Over on the other site, David was covering the lead up to the apparently successful Burevestnik test. Sadly, its almost all ship tracking because this late in the year, you don’t get many satellite images that far north. pic.twitter.com/k04x9u6whp

— Dr. Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) October 26, 2025

Meanwhile, several Russian vessels that are known to be used in missile tests were noted in positions along the coast of the Arctic archipelago, both on the Barents Sea and Kara Sea sides. Probable support aircraft belonging to Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear corporation, and the Russian Aerospace Forces were also seen at Rogachevo airfield on Novaya Zemlya.

There have also been flights by a U.S. Air Force WC-135 Constant Phoenix “nuke sniffer” aircraft in the region, which some observers suggested could have been related to a Burevestnik. After a flight by this aircraft around the Barents Sea on August 5, the Air Force told TWZ that this was “to conduct routine background collection … to ensure signatory nations are adhering to established United Nations treaties.” The Air Force spokesperson added that the deployment of the WC-135 to the United Kingdom was planned and scheduled months in advance.

Background collection is something that could be conducted in anticipation of a Burevestnik test in the future. This data will be used to compare that from a collection mission following a test. At the same time, the wider region hosts other Russian nuclear assets, which would also be of interest for such flights, which are fairly regular in occurrence.

Finally, the test site at Pankovo, north of Rogachevo, on Yuzhny Island in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, has seen considerable activity starting this summer. Pankovo hosts what is understood to be the main launch site for the Burevestnik, with two rail-type launchers under a retractable covering.

Update on the Burevestnik launch site. Launchers and covers for the first Burevestnik company are being installed. The presence of lightning rods suggest that assets will be on the pad for long periods of time. pic.twitter.com/UvhryhIJVd

— Decker Eveleth (@dex_eve) April 5, 2025

On 21 October 2025 Russia conducted “the key test” of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile (also referred to as SSC-X-9 Skyfall). The test is reported to be successful. The missile travelled 14,000 km in a 15-hour flight (Image: Pan’kovo test site). Links follow 1/ pic.twitter.com/OVuCCjPiDO

— Pavel Podvig (@russianforces) October 26, 2025

Provided that last week’s test was conducted from Pankovo, making use of the area signaled by the NOTAM, then the missile must have flown in a racetrack or zigzag pattern around the Arctic archipelago. Less likely would be a longer route flown across the north of Russia.

Whatever the case, Norway, the closest NATO country to the test area, said it hadn’t detected any spikes in radiation at any of its monitoring posts.

“We have not measured anything abnormal at our measuring stations in Norway,” a spokesperson for the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA) told the Barents Observer. However, there is still time for such a reading to be made.

“If there has been a radioactive release in connection with Russia’s testing of the cruise missile, it will take a long time to travel to Norway, and it will take time before it can be registered at our measuring stations,” the DSA spokesperson added.

Previous tests of the Burevestnik have not been without incident.

When he announced the missile in 2018, Putin suggested that tests of the propulsion system had occurred the previous year, but there was no indication of whether this had been in flight or on the ground and under what conditions.

Soon after Putin’s 2018 announcement, the Norwegian-based environmental group Bellona suggested that a radiation spike in the Arctic that same winter was caused by the missile’s open-air-cooled reactor core.

Later in 2018, a U.S. intelligence report described the loss at sea of a Russian nuclear-powered missile during a 2017 test. The report added that Russia was expected to embark on a search and recovery mission to try to lift the missile’s wreckage from the seabed.

The Russian Ministry of Defense released the video below in 2018, saying that it showed an earlier Burevestnik test launch, as well as examples of the missiles themselves.

More dramatically, in 2019, an explosion occurred aboard a barge in the White Sea, outside Nenoksa, killing five Rosatom scientists. It also led to a radiation spike in the Russian city of Severodvinsk, as you can read more about here. The explosion has been blamed on a reactor from a Burevestnik recovered from the sea, likely the one that was lost in 2017.

While the details of these accidents remain murky, they point to a significant problem in using nuclear propulsion for a missile or any other vehicle flying in the atmosphere.

It should be recalled that, in the case of SLAM, the nuclear ramjet had no shielding to contain dangerous radiation, a requirement driven by the need for the powerplant to be small enough to fit inside the missile. The SLAM’s exhaust plume also contained unspent fissile material that would have contaminated any area, enemy-controlled or not, that it passed over on its way to the target.

While the Burevestnik has already been likened to a ‘tiny flying Chernobyl’ by some observers, it’s important to remember that we still don’t know how it functions.

Nevertheless, provided it does indeed use nuclear propulsion, as claimed, there exists the risk of accidents.

“The testing [of the Burevestnik] carries a risk of accidents and local radioactive emissions,” Norway’s Intelligence Service (NIS) stated in a threat assessment report published last year.

This is especially the case during an unarmed test, when the missile necessarily has to come down to the surface, impacting either land or water. Here, especially, there remain a lot of questions about how the missile is tested.

It’s possible that the missile came down in waters around Novaya Zemlya, in either the Barents Sea or the Kara Sea. According to the Barents Observer and other sources, there are several ships in this area, on both sides of the Matochkin Strait, which might be involved in a recovery operation.

These ships include Rosatom’s special-purpose vessel Rossita, on the eastern coast of the Kola Peninsula. This vessel was noted making port calls in Novaya Zemlya after previous presumed Burevestnik tests. The Rossita is equipped to transport spent nuclear fuel and other hazardous radioactive material.

Perhaps, if Norway subsequently detects a radioactive spike in this area, we might learn more about where the missile ended its flight.

In the meantime, Putin took the opportunity to push claims about the missile’s game-changing nature.

“We need to determine the possible uses and begin preparing the infrastructure for deploying this weapon in our armed forces,” Putin said yesterday. This is especially relevant considering that the New START treaty with the United States, which puts a limit on strategic nuclear warheads and launchers, expires next year. Gerasimov’s announcement of the long-distance test also came one day before Russia began its annual Grom strategic nuclear maneuvers.

When asked for his reaction to the claims of the Burevestnik test, President Donald Trump stated that the U.S. Navy has a nuclear submarine “right off their shores,” meaning that there is no immediate requirement for a missile with the kind of range that the Russian cruise missile should possess.

At the same time, Trump noted that Russia is “not playing games with us. We’re not playing games with them either.” As for Putin’s comments on the missile test, Trump said: “I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying,” reminding the Russian leader that the priority was to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

Trump responded to Putin’s threats and the recent Burevestnik missile test by reminding that the US has a nuclear submarine “right off their coast.”

He said there’s no need to fire missiles 8,000 miles when such assets are already in place, and called on Putin to end a war that… pic.twitter.com/kRIlFdMzQZ

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) October 27, 2025

Still, the prospect of the Burevestnik entering service is a concerning one for adversaries of Russia. The missile can be launched preemptively and approach its target from any vector long after launch. For example, it could be launched from the Arctic, stay aloft for many hours, and then attack the United States from the south. Once launched, its flight path is entirely unpredictable, and it could exploit holes in defenses and weaker spots in early warning capabilities. It provides another reason why space-based tracking layers, including those that can spot low-flying aircraft, are currently very much on trend.

It is also worth noting that the latest Burevestnik test comes at a time when the U.S. Golden Dome initiative is taking shape, and the Russian missile reinforces the case for such a system. At the same time, it also underlines the reason why Russia wants weapons like this, so that it can better bypass existing strategic air defense systems.

The latest developments leave no doubt that the Burevestnik is a prestige program for Russia, even if many questions still surround it, and the nature of the latest test.

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