PDB Afternoon Bulletin | December 3rd, 2025: Putin Suffers A Nuclear Missile Disaster & Confusion Over Ukraine Peace Talks
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It's Wednesday, the 3rd of December. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, how does one say failure to launch in Russian? Oh, well, let me tell you why I ask. Russia's so-called Satan-2 missile, there's a name for you, suffers a rather embarrassing crash on launch, blowing up seconds after ignition. We'll break down the failure and what it says about Russia's weapons program. Later in the show, Moscow denies reports that it shut down the U.S. peace plan for Ukraine after meeting with American envoys.
What happened during the Sarmat (Satan II) missile launch failure?
I mean, they probably did shut it down, but they don't want the narrative to be that they shut it down. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. We'll begin with something Vladimir Putin did not want the world to see, another one of his so-called superweapons blowing up on the launch pad. The weapon at the center of this spectacular failure is the RS-28 Sarmat, better known in NATO circles as Satan II, because every missile needs a catchy name. It's supposed to be the crown jewel of Russia's next-generation nuclear arsenal. Instead, this week, well, it became the punchline. Here's what we know. Russian forces attempted a Sarmat launch from a test facility in the Orenburg region, and just seconds after ignition, well, things went very wrong.
The missile veered off course almost immediately, that's never good, belching thick black smoke before crashing down and detonating in a fireball. Again, not what you want. witnesses reported a purple plume rising afterward, exactly what you'd expect when a hypergolic liquid-fueled missile ruptures and its toxic propellants combust in the open air. And yes, that's the first time I've ever said a sentence that contains the phrase hypergolic liquid-fueled missile. Hopefully it's not the last. For a weapon Putin insists will hold the United States at risk anywhere on Earth, it seems to be struggling to travel more than a few hundred feet. So, what is Sarmat supposed to be? In theory, Satan-2 is Russia's answer to aging Soviet hardware.
It's a colossal, silo-launched intercontinental ballistic missile, the heaviest ICBM in the world. It's designed to carry multiple nuclear warheads or even experimental hypersonic glide vehicles across continents. Putin has spent years advertising it as unstoppable, fast, powerful, and capable of evading any missile defense system that the U.S. could field. But here's the problem for the Kremlin. The track record, it doesn't match the sales pitch. Sarmat had its first and basically only verified full test flight back in April of 2022.
How did eyewitnesses and analysts describe the missile's explosion and plume?
Since then, it's been nothing but a parade of failures. We've seen aborted launches. We've seen test silos obliterated. In 2024, one attempt ended with a crater so large that analysts could track it from space. And now comes this latest embarrassment, an explosion so obvious that observers hundreds of miles away caught the plume as it drifted upward. The bottom line is simple. If nuclear deterrence depends on reliability, well, then Sarmat is not deterring anyone. As a matter of fact, it's doing the opposite. It's advertising how fragile Russia's nuclear program appears to be. And this isn't an isolated problem. We've covered several other Russian wonder weapons here on the PDB, and they're running into similar issues.
Take the Brevesnik, also known as Skyfall. This is the nuclear-powered cruise missile that Putin unveiled back in 2018. Now, it was supposed to fly indefinitely using a miniature reactor. In reality, it's produced repeated test failures and one infamous 2019 explosion that killed nuclear engineers and set radiation levels climbing along Russia's northern coast.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:13
2
What happened during the Sarmat (Satan II) missile launch failure?
1:13–3:21
3
How did eyewitnesses and analysts describe the missile's explosion and plume?
3:21–13:09
4
What is the Sarmat (Satan II) missile supposed to do and why is it significant?
13:09–13:53
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The President's Daily Brief
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