By Galina Korol | 2025-06-02

KYIV -- Russia planned to rattle the West with a nuclear show of force. Instead, the launch site stayed quiet.

Russia had scheduled a live-fire test launch of an RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile, one of the central components of its nuclear arsenal, for the night of May 18-19, Ukrainian military intelligence said in advance.

The Kremlin intended to send a message, but Ukraine stepped on its timing.

"In order to demonstratively pressure and intimidate Ukraine, and also EU [European Union] and NATO member states, the aggressor state of Russia intends to make a 'training and combat' launch of the RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile from the Yars complex," Ukrainian military intelligence posted on its Telegram channel a day before the supposed launch.

But when May 19 arrived, the missile was still nailed to the ground. The Russian Ministry of Defense offered no comment. No televised footage, no triumphant press release ensued. Just silence.

Russia typically treats missile launch plans as classified and rarely announces them in advance, but it usually confirms such launches afterward, Reuters noted.

The military could have canceled the launch for any number of reasons -- technical, strategic or political, say analysts. But whatever the rationale, the result was the same: a planned display of nuclear might ended awkwardly, raising new questions about the reliability of Russia's arsenal and the effectiveness of its strategic messaging.

'A theatrical muscle flex'

The RS-24 Yars is capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads. It has a reported range exceeding 10,000km, according to Moscow, placing it squarely in the category of strategic ballistic missiles.

That range makes it unsuitable for short-range use, say analysts.

Russia is estimated to have about 180 silo-based Yars missiles and 24 mobile ones. Though operational since 2009, the missile has become as much a tool of propaganda as a weapon of deterrence. President Vladimir Putin frequently highlights the Yars in speeches and parades, portraying it as central to Russia's nuclear "parity" with NATO.

But recent developments cast doubt on its reliability.

"This is the foundation of Russia's aggressive policy. If there's something wrong with this [weapon] system, the consequence is damage to the respect and authority of Russia, which is engaging in blatant extortion," Oleksandr Kochetkov, a nuclear missile specialist from Kyiv, told Kontur.

"Although Putin is constantly talking about Russia's new modern weapons, something is obviously wrong even with the Yars, which was added to the armory back in 2009 and is now on combat duty," Ihor Chalenko, a Ukrainian political analyst, director of the Center for Analysis and Strategies and a member of the National League of Centrists, told Kontur.

Even Putin's beloved Yars appears to be malfunctioning, said political analyst Ihor Chalenko.

"There have already been two negative experiences, when the missiles deviated directly from their specified trajectory and ... quite drastically," he told Kontur, citing incidents in 2023 (October 1 and November 25), when missiles veered off course.

Military analyst Serhii Grabsky, a Ukrainian reservist colonel who participated in peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Iraq, was blunt in his assessment.

"We understand clearly what all these drills with [Russia's] so-called strategic nuclear forces are worth. They're just a theatrical muscle flex, utterly worthless," he told Kontur.

Last September, Russia's next-generation RS-28 Sarmat missile exploded in its silo during testing, leaving behind only a crater, recalled Grabsky.

An unexpected area of decline

Russia had planned its RS-24 Yars missile launch not at the usual site, the Plesetsk cosmodrome, but near the town of Svobodny in Sverdlovsk province, roughly 2,000km from the Ukrainian border, said Ukrainian intelligence.

The choice of location was arbitrary, said Kochetkov. Even for a training launch, protocol requires replacing nuclear warheads with dummies and performing pre-launch checks, he said.

Everything came to a halt at that stage, Kochetkov suggested.

"Two possible explanations for the Kremlin's missile impotence come to mind. One is that the actual condition of Russia's nuclear weapons is simply catastrophic, and it's become another mockery of the might of Putin's would-be empire," he said.

"The other is that there were daredevils in Russia's nuclear industry who dislike the Putin regime so much that they're sabotaging the processes that are so important to him."

A deeper issue is dependence on Ukrainian engineering, said Anatoliy Khrapchinskiy, an aviation analyst and deputy director of an electronic warfare equipment manufacturing company.

Speaking on Ukraine's Channel 24, he said, "The Yars intercontinental missile is a Soviet-era invention, and before 2007, Ukraine, specifically Pivdenmash [an arms manufacturer], was involved in creating it. And the majority of the components and technologies came from Ukrainian engineers."

Since the full-scale war broke out in 2022, this cooperation has stopped.

Russia has not conducted nuclear tests since the Soviet collapse, said Grabsky.

"They don't know what they're holding and how it flies," he said.

The Soviet strategy

The Kremlin prefers its nuclear saber rattling to be dramatic and unexpected, according to Chalenko.

The Ukrainian revelation in advance of the RS-24 Yars missile launch may have disrupted Russian propaganda by stripping away the element of surprise, he said.

The Kremlin set the launch date -- May 19 -- to coincide with a scheduled phone call between Putin and US President Donald Trump, contend analysts.

But now, its intention of impressing the outside world has backfired, said Chalenko.

The latest much-publicized flop with the RS-24 Yars spotlights the disgrace and weakness of Putin's army, he said.