President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had successfully tested a potent new strategic missile and declined to rule out the possibility it could carry out weapons tests involving nuclear explosions for the first time in more than 3 decades.

He said for the first time that Moscow had successfully tested the Burevestnik, a nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable cruise missile with a potential range of many thousands of miles.

Putin also told an annual gathering of analysts and journalists that Russia had almost completed work on its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile system, another key element of its new generation of nuclear weapons: “No one in their right mind would use nuclear weapons against Russia. If such an attack was detected, such a number of our missiles - hundreds, hundreds - would appear in the air that not a single enemy would have a chance of survival”.