U.S. President Donald Trump looks at Russian President Vladimir Putin next to him during a press conference after talks to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Russia’s test of an “invincible” nuclear-powered cruise missile with “infinite range” has been met with an unimpressed reaction from US President Donald Trump as a new cold front opens between the two countries.
Russia announced on Sunday that it had successfully tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the 9M730 Burevestnik (or “Storm Petrel”), last Tuesday.
The missile, which can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads and was codenamed Skyfall by NATO, boasted that it could change direction mid-flight and move vertically and horizontally, meaning it could evade missiles and air defense systems.
Trump, who is on a whirlwind tour of Asia and is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, was unimpressed by the missile launches and told reporters on Monday that Putin should instead focus on ending the war in Ukraine.
“I don’t think President Putin’s comments are appropriate either,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Monday. “By the way, we should end the war, we’re in our fourth year of a war that was supposed to last a week, and we should do it instead of missile tests.”
US President Donald Trump looks on next to people waving Malaysian flags before departing on Air Force One from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang on October 27, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
He also criticized the use of Russian missiles, saying the United States has nuclear submarines off the coast of Russia and does not need weapons that can fly far.
“They know we have the largest nuclear submarine in the world right off our shores, so they don’t have to travel 8,000 miles,” Trump said, according to an audio file released by the White House.
Trump added: “They’re not playing games with us, and we’re not playing games with them.” “We are constantly testing missiles.”
The Kremlin responded on Monday: “Russia is consistently working to ensure its own security. It is with this purpose that new weapon systems, including the aforementioned (Burevestnik) system, are being developed,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in comments carried by Russian state news agency TASS.
Peskov added: “Russia must do everything to ensure its own security.”
Time your test carefully
The timing of the test appears to be no coincidence, coming on the same day that Russia was humiliated and sidelined by President Trump’s cancellation of a scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hungary.
In what may be a warning to President Donald Trump, who is keen to strengthen its military and is considering giving Ukraine long-range Tomahawk missiles capable of hitting targets deep in Russia, the Russian government announced on Sunday that it had successfully tested a Burevestnik missile.
During the test, the missile flew 14,000 kilometers (or 8,700 miles). In comments reported by the TASS news agency, Russian military chief of staff Valery Gerasimov told Putin on Sunday that the flight lasted about 15 hours, but that this was “not the limit.”
The Kremlin said in a statement on Sunday that President Vladimir Putin praised the test when he visited the command posts of fighting troops in Ukraine and was briefed on the situation on the front lines.
In comments translated by The Associated Press, Putin told military officials that these missiles are “unique products that have no parallel anywhere else in the world.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Grigory Sysoev AFP | Getty Images
Russia insists that these missiles are part of its nuclear deterrent, and President Putin said on Sunday that his country’s “nuclear deterrence is at the highest level. It is no exaggeration to say that it is at least higher than the nuclear deterrence of all nuclear-armed states.” But he added that Russia would now work to put these weapons on “combat alert.”
On the same day Russia demonstrated its strength, the Kremlin warned that any attack on Russian soil would be met with an “overwhelming” response.
Deterioration of relations
Relations between Washington and Moscow soured last week after the White House announced that a scheduled meeting between Putin and Trump would be postponed indefinitely after the White House leader said he did not want a “wasteful meeting.”
Trump added that the in-person summit meeting was canceled because “every time I talk to Mr. Vladimir, we have a good conversation, but then we just don’t get it together.”
The announcement was met with stony silence from the Kremlin as senior Russian officials blamed Western media and “fake news” for the cancellation of the talks, which had previously been hailed by Russian state media as a coup against Moscow as it battles Ukraine for President Trump’s ear and support.
