Vladimir Putin's terrifying nuclear arsenal including world's deadliest ICBM Satan-2 missile

Russia today fired a new intermediate range missile known as the Oreshnik but its arsenal is feared to also boast as many as 5,500 nuclear warheads - many of which are ready to go

Mad tyrant Vladimir Putin has a massive arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads at his fingertips

Earlier today, the Kremlin fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile in response to Kyiv's use of American and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russia. The Russian president said in a televised address to the country how even US air defence systems would be powerless to stop the new missile, which flies at Mach 10 and is known as the Oreshnik - Russian for hazelnut tree.

As terrifying as that sounds, it pales into comparison to the amount of damage even one of Russia’s nuclear warheads could cause. According to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Russia has a stockpile of 5,580 nuclear warheads as of 2024. Of those, more than 1,700 are ready for launch.

Russia's stockpile is the largest confirmed stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world, with the country also having the largest confirmed strategically deployed arsenal in the world, as of 2024. The remaining weapons are either being held in reserve stockpiles, or have been retired and are set to be dismantled.

Russia has three different short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), including the SS-26/9M723 Iskander-M, SSC-8/9M729 and the SSC-7/9M728. The Iskander is a mobile, tactical ballistic missile capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional warheads, deployed near NATO borders.

The SS-C-8/P-800 Oniks is an intermediate-range cruise missile originally designed as an anti-ship weapon, it has since been adapted for land-attack missions. There are five types of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with ranges of 10,000km to 16,000km. On top of this, the country also has the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, travelling at speeds of more than Mach 20 it can manouevre mid-flight to evade missile defenses.

In Putin’s nationwide address today - his first public appearance in nearly two weeks - the tyrant said today's strike was in response to Ukrainian strikes on the Russian territory with US and British missiles earlier this week. Chillingly, he added Russia would issue advance warnings before firing on its enemies - to allow civilians to get to safety.

He said in a statement: "I would like to inform the personnel of the Russian Armed Forces, the citizens of our country, our friends around the world , as well as those who continue to harbour illusions about the possibility of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, about the events taking place today in the SVO zone, namely after the use of long-range weapons of Western manufacture on our territory."

Earlier, Ukraine claimed Russia launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) overnight at one of its cities, but American officials said an initial U.S. assessment indicated the strike was carried out with an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Ukraine did not provide evidence an ICBM was used in the attack on the central city of Dnipro.

Nine countries currently have nuclear weapons: Russia , the United States, China , France, the United Kingdom , Pakistan, India, Israel , and North Korea. Russia and the US have far, far bigger arsenals than any of the other nations, according to Our World in Data.

Most recent estimates suggest China has 410 warheads, France 290 and the UK 225 nuclear warheads, and the US 5,244. Given two warheads were used to kill as many as 210,000 people in Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of WWII, the scale of disruption thousands of modern, far more powerful warheads could wreak is almost unthinkable.