Hours after holding rare talks on the war with two Western leaders, Vladimir Putin staged a show of strength by firing a nuclear-capable Bulava missile thousands of miles across Russia to land close to NATO borders. Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre had urged Putin to take steps to de-escalate the conflict during the unusual talks, but there was no immediate sign of a breakthrough. Putin reportedly used the lengthy phone call to defend Russia’s war in Ukraine and set out his view of the two countries’ shared history. Soon afterwards, Russia launched a Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile from the nuclear-powered submarine Generalissimus Suvorov in the Sea of Okhotsk, in the country’s Far East.
The nuclear-capable missile travelled around 3,400 miles across Russia before reaching the Chizha missile test range in the Arkhangelsk region. The test range lies around 320 miles from Vardø in Norway and 386 miles from Nuorgam in Finland.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said the missile’s warhead units reached their designated target area at the scheduled time. The launch came after Mr Stubb and Mr Støre initiated Tuesday’s phone call with Putin as diplomatic efforts intensify to bring an end to the war.
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Ukraine was consulted during preparations for the talks, which marked the first known direct contact between the Nordic leaders and Putin since shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Mr Stubb described the discussion as “frank and substantive”, saying Finland and Norway’s proximity to Russia meant the outcome of the war would have a direct impact on their security and that of Europe.
He said: “We are neighboring countries to Russia. The outcome of this war will have a direct impact on our and the broader European security. Ending the war requires direct discussions.”
Mr Støre stressed the devastating consequences of the conflict, saying: “The war comes with enormous human and material costs. The suffering and destruction will impact generations. In the call we stressed the importance of de-escalation.”
The Kremlin said Putin told the two leaders that any lasting settlement would need to take Russia’s interests fully into account, while accusing the EU and NATO of pursuing policies that were prolonging the conflict.
A source close to the Kremlin also told Reuters that Putin reiterated that Russia would not compromise on its aim of taking control of the whole of Ukraine’s Donbas region.
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Following the talks, Mr Stubb and Mr Støre spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and briefed him on their conversation with Putin.
Mr Zelensky later called for concrete steps towards de-escalation, including over energy and infrastructure.
The submarine is named after Alexander Suvorov, an 18th-century Russian commander who helped expand Moscow’s control over Crimea and southern Ukraine. Suvorov also led the bloody capture of Izmail, now in Ukraine’s Odesa region, in 1790.
In regards to the latest missile launch, Moscow portrayed the exercise as part of its routine military training.
The Russian Defence Ministry said: “The crew of the Project 955A Borei-A strategic nuclear-powered missile submarine Generalissimus Suvorov of the Pacific Fleet, in accordance with the combat training plan, carried out a launch of a Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile at the Chizha test range in the Arkhangelsk region.”
The ministry added that “the missile firing was carried out from a submerged position in the waters of the Sea of Okhotsk.”
It is only the third time since 2020 that intercontinental missiles have been fired from the Sea of Okhotsk towards the Chizha test range.
Following Putin’s talks with the Nordic leaders, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “nothing new was discussed” and warned that the war was “likely to escalate”.
OPINION – CAROLE MALONE: Some poor village is missing its idiot if PM really thinks we’ll swallow this
Andy Burnham doesn’t know what he’s doing, writes Carole Malone, right (Image: Getty / Express)
Is Andy Burnham really as thick as he appears to be or does he think the British people are? I suspect it’s the former which means some poor village somewhere is missing its idiot. Why else would he come out with nonsense this week saying: “Brexit is to blame for the small boats crisis” when it’s patently not.
Brexit has nothing whatsoever to do with the small boats crisis which started way before we left the EU and while we were still under EU rules. The Tory Government at the time declared the situation a “major incident”. More importantly he can’t blame the crisis on Brexit for the simple reason that historical data makes clear that the EU’s Migration Returns mechanisms brought MORE asylum seekers into the UK than it removed.
Take 2019 for instance – Britain transferred out 263 asylum seekers while 714 more were sent to us from Europe. Does that sound like a good system to you when you’re taking three times more people than you’re shipping out? And if we rejoined the EU we’d have to take as many migrants as they told us to take and it would be more than are coming here now.
Also does Burnham really expect us to believe what he claimed on Good Morning Britain this week that the reason migrants come here is because they know we can’t return them: “We have people knowing we can’t return them in the same way we used to.”
Which is rubbish, because it was every bit as hard to return them before Brexit as it is now. And Burnham knows full well that migrants come here for lots of reasons – the main ones being free hotels, free housing, free healthcare, a lifetime on benefits and free education. They don’t come here because of Brexit.
So why IS he coming out with this divisive tosh now – not least because his own Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said categorically that Brexit is NOT the reason for the small boats crisis: “There are lots of debates to be had about the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but is it responsible for the boats? I don’t think that is true.”
So why is our dopey PM saying the polar opposite to the woman who knows more about the small boats crisis than he ever will? I’ll tell you why – he’s using this phoney Brexit narrative in order to justify the fact he’s crawling back onto the arms of the EU. He desperately wants Britain back in the failing bloc because he doesn’t know how to run the country and he’s stupid enough to think they do. And if we’re back in the EU, he can blame Brussels for everything that goes wrong here.
But by making these fake Brexit pronouncements he also knows it will detract attention from the fact that our “talk-a-lot-but-do-nothing PM” is doing beggar-all about the problems crippling this country. In his first 100 days in office, he’s barely said a word about illegal immigration or how he’s going to resolve a situation that is costing taxpayers billions every year. He’s said nothing about how he’s going to pay down the £3trillion debt (which is costing us £110billion a year in interest). He refused to say how, or if he’s going to cut the gargantuan benefits bill. And he’s saying even less about the cyber war we’re told is going to hit in the near future which could see Britain plunged into darkness.
And what’s Burnham been doing while all these problems are piling up on his desk – he’s been on Gogglebox eating crisps with his mate, Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram, and making TikTok videos. This man is not a serious politician. He’s trivial and much of the stuff we’re being told is in the budget is also trivial and does nothing to sort out the big issues that could bring Britain crashing down.
But back to Brexit – he put his foot in his mouth yet again on Good Morning Britain saying he wasn’t averse to the idea of open borders. This from the man who in 2017 said free movement should never be revived because “it was defeated at the ballot box in 2016”. Now he’s changed his mind. What the hell’s wrong with him? Is he taking lessons on how to govern from Starmer? Or does he just change his beliefs and principles – like Starmer did – as often as he changes his underpants? Does he actually believe in anything or does he just say what suits him at the time – like Starmer did?
And what are we supposed to think of a politician who told the good people of Leave-voting Makerfield that he had no intention of unpicking Brexit. “Brexit is done,” he told them when he was pleading for their votes – the votes he desperately needed to catapult him into No 10. But now he’s there, he’s spitting on those people who put their trust in him, who believed he wasn’t going to interfere with this country’s biggest ever democratic vote. “We need to be honest with people about who we are,” he droned this week.
HONEST? Oh, pull the other one! Andy Burnham wouldn’t know honest if it smacked him in the face because he’s been anything but honest about Brexit. He also said this week that Britain is now gaining momentum – well if it is why the hell does he want to drag us back into the crisis-hit, failing EU where most of the major economies are in the toilet and in a way worse state than ours?
Do we think Burnham even knows that? Our Prime Minister – who has spent the first 100 days as PM playing man of the people and desperately trying to be liked rather than actually doing his job – is standing by watching this country crash and burn with a silly grin on his face and bag of Monster Munch in his hand. He really doesn’t know what he’s doing. And you have to wonder who’s more terrified about that – him or us?