On October 26, 2025, the Kremlin said Vladimir Putin had visited a command post of the Joint Group of Forces and, during a meeting with Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, announced the completion of decisive tests of the Burevestnik missile. According to Gerasimov, the exercise took place on October 21: the missile allegedly stayed airborne for about 15 hours, covered 14,000 kilometers, and performed vertical and horizontal maneuvers.
The project was first announced publicly in 2018. The U.S. think tank Nuclear Threat Initiative, citing American intelligence data, wrote that Russia conducted at least 13 tests in 2017-2019, only two of which were partially successful. The project was also linked to the August 2019 explosion near Severodvinsk, where seven Rosatom and Defense Ministry employees were killed.
Some experts interviewed by Novaya-Europe doubt that the missile has actually reached an operational stage. Pavel Luzin called the Burevestnik story a political performance, while Maxim Starchak said there is almost no objective data on the system, leaving it closer to a myth than a confirmed weapons platform.
Other analysts say the missile’s concept is to bypass missile defense systems through global range and an unpredictable route. David Gendelman and Pavel Aksenov stress, however, that even if the declared parameters are accurate, its subsonic speed would make it vulnerable once detected, and open sources contain no evidence of a full series of successful launches.
Pavel Podvig argues that Burevestnik is above all a political weapon and a signal to the West. Experts also point to environmental and technical risks: a nuclear power unit could be dangerous in an accident, after a crash, or if radioactive material is released.