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Russia’s test launch of ICBM known as Satan II appears to have failed
New satellite imagery indicates Russia may have conducted a failed intercontinental ballistic missile test in recent days involving its Sarmat ICBM, also known as the Satan II.
A satellite image analyzed by CBS News shows a large crater and remnants of a possible explosion on a launchpad at Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia on Sept. 21. The crater is approximately 200 feet wide, and the site contains dark rubble and other debris indicating a large fire or explosion.
The satellite images show several trucks at the site. Fires continued to burn in the trees near the launchpad site on Saturday, according to George Barros, the Institute for the Study of War’s Russia team lead.
Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, an arms control and nuclear weapons analysis blog, said the launch likely happened on Sept. 19. A Notice to Air Missions or NOTAM notification for pilots in the area was later canceled the same day. Podvig said an explosion may have occurred during the defueling of the missile as the images indicate the missile may have “exploded in the silo.”
The Plesetsk Cosmodrome is located roughly 500 miles north of Moscow and 250 miles east of Russia’s border with Finland.
“We are aware of the press reporting surrounding Russia’s ICBM launch earlier this month. We refer you to the Russian Ministry of Defence for further information on this incident,” a U.S. Defense Department spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment in a press briefing on Monday, Sept. 23, about the alleged explosion, saying: “We do not have any information on this matter.”
This is Russia’s latest Sarmat ICBM test since the missile entered service in 2021. It was last launched in February 2023, two days prior to President Biden’s visit to Kyiv, Ukraine. U.S. officials told CBS News the test failed.
The Sarmat is classified as a “heavy” ICBM designed to reach a target about 11,000 miles away and is capable of carrying up to 10 tons in payload, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the country suspended its participation in the nuclear arms pact called the New START Treaty in February 2023, adding that Russia would resume nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. did.
The U.S. conducted two Minuteman III ICBM test launches in 2023, one in June and one in September.
Tom Karako, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Missile Defense Project, told CBS News the latest Sarmat test is “nuclear saber rattling.”
“The United States is, to some extent, playing catch up in terms of modernizing our nuclear force, which in relative terms, is significantly older,” Karako said. “Russia’s been putting a lot of effort after this, so Sarmat is one piece of that, but it’s the many-headed beast.”
Sergei Karakayev, Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces commander, said in December 2023 the country intended to conduct seven ICBM tests in 2024.
According to Russian independent news outlet Sirena, Russia has conducted six failed tests of nuclear weaponry since June, including its Poseidon torpedo and Bulava submarine-launched missile.
HUNTSVILLE — A Texas man who had waived his right to appeal his death sentence was put to death Tuesday evening for killing his 3-month-old son more than 16 years ago, one of five executions scheduled within a week’s time in the U.S.
AP
Travis Mullis, 38, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m. CDT. He was condemned for stomping to death his son Alijah in January 2008.
Mullis was the fourth inmate put to death this year in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment state. Another execution was carried out Tuesday evening in Missouri, and on Thursday, executions were scheduled to take place in Oklahoma and Alabama. South Carolina conducted an execution Friday.
Authorities said Mullis, then 21 and living in Brazoria County, drove to nearby Galveston with his son after fighting with his girlfriend. Mullis parked his car and sexually assaulted his son. After the infant began to cry uncontrollably, Mullis began strangling the child before taking him out of the car and stomping on his head, according to authorities.
The infant’s body was later found on the roadside. Mullis fled the state but was later arrested after surrendering to police in Philadelphia.
Mullis’ execution proceeded after one of his attorneys, Shawn Nolan, said he planned no late appeals in a bid to spare the inmate’s life. Nolan also said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that Texas would be executing a “redeemed man” who has always accepted responsibility for committing “an awful crime.”
“He never had a chance at life being abandoned by his parents and then severely abused by his adoptive father starting at age three. During his decade and a half on death row, he spent countless hours working on his redemption. And he achieved it. The Travis that Texas wanted to kill is long gone. Rest in Peace TJ,” Nolan said.
Mullis declined an offer earlier in the day to phone his attorney from a holding cell outside the death chamber, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Hannah Haney. His lawyers also did not file a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
In a letter submitted in February to U.S. District Judge George Hanks in Houston, Mullis wrote that he had no desire to challenge his case any further. Mullis has previously taken responsibility for his son’s death and has said “his punishment fit the crime.”
At Mullis’ trial, prosecutors said Mullis was a “monster” who manipulated people, was deceitful and refused the medical and psychiatric help he had been offered.
Since his conviction in 2011, Mullis has long been at odds with his various attorneys over whether to appeal his case. At times, Mullis had asked that his appeals be waived, only to later change his mind.
Nolan had previously told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals during a June 2023 hearing that state courts in Texas had erred in ruling that Mullis had been mentally competent when he had waived his right to appeal his case about a decade earlier.
Nolan told the appeals court that Mullis has been treated for “profound mental illness” since he was 3 years old, was sexually abused as a child and is “severely bipolar,” leading him to change his mind about appealing.
Natalie Thompson, who at the time was with the Texas Attorney General’s Office, told the appeals court that Mullis understood what he was doing and could go against his lawyers’ advice “even if he’s suffering from mental illness.”
The appeals court upheld Hank’s ruling from 2021 that found Mullis “repeatedly competently chose to waive review” of his death sentence.
The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the application of the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but not for people with serious mental illness.
If the remaining executions in Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma are carried out as planned, it will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.
The first took place Friday when South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death. Also Tuesday, Marcellus Williams was executed in Missouri. On Thursday, executions are scheduled for Alan Miller in Alabama and Emmanuel Littlejohn in Oklahoma.
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