The United States announced a series of measures in response to Russia's suspension of New START.
First, it suspended biannual exchange of detailed data on treaty-accountable items and facilities. Normally, these exchanges reflect the status of strategic forces as of 1 March and 1 September. The format of these exchanges is described in Part Two of the New START Protocol. It's a fairly detailed list that includes, for example, the information about the number of ICBMs deployed at each base, non-deployed ICBMs and launchers with their unique IDs, etc. All that is now withheld by the United States from Russia.
These exchanges have not been truly public. The United States would normally made available the unclassified version of its submission to those who requested it. Hans Kristensen would normally made them public - here is, for example, the 1 September 2012 exchange. However, unlike in old START, the United States cannot make public Russia's New START data - the treaty explicitly does not allow that.
The only exception are the aggregate numbers that each party was free to disclose. These are the number of deployed delivery vehicles, the number of deployed warheads, and the total number of launchers. Despite withholding the detailed exchange, the United States published its own aggregate numbers in May 2023, listing "No provided" in Russia's column.
It is not entirely clear if the United States will continue this practice and publish its aggregate numbers as of 1 September 2023.
Other measures implemented by the United State is the withholding of notifications (with the exception of ballistic missile launch notifications under the 1988 agreement that Russia will also continue), suspension of inspections and telemetry exchange.
U.S. State Department released the New START aggregate numbers as of 1 March 2023. Since Russia suspended its participation in the treaty in February 2023, the Russia column contains "Not provided." As for the United States the declared numbers are 1419 warheads, 662 deployed and 800 total launchers (1420, 659, and 800 in September 2022).
On 11 April 2023 the Strategic Rocket Forces conducted a successful launch of "an intercontinental ballistic missile from a road-mobile launcher." According to the official statement, the "training warhead of the missile" reached its designated target at the Sary-Shagan test site in Kazakhstan.
The missile is believed to be a modified Topol-M/Yars ICBM, sometime referred to as Topol-ME/Yars-E, which will be used to test re-entry vehicles of intercontinental ballistic missiles. This appears to be the first test of the missile. Until 2019, Russia used a Topol-E missile for these purposed. The last Topol-E test was conducted in November 2019. According to announcement made in December 2022, the Strategic Rocket Forces are planning to conduct several tests from Kapustin Yar in 2023.
In his annual (well, almost) address to the Federal Assembly on 21 February 2023 President of Russia announced that "Russia is suspending its membership in the New START Treaty."
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement later that day, in which it explained the decision and stated that
Russia [...] will continue to strictly comply with the quantitative restrictions stipulated in the Treaty for strategic offensive arms within the life cycle of the Treaty. Russia will also continue to exchange notifications of ICBM and SLBM launches with the United States in accordance with the relevant Soviet-US agreement signed in 1988.
The Federal Law on the suspension was approved by the State Duma and the Federation Council on 22 February 2023 and signed by the president on 28 February 2023. The law entered into force on 28 February 2023.
In a statement issued on 15 March 2023, U.S. Department of State called the decision "legally invalid" and asserted that "Russia remains bound by its obligations under the treaty."
On 20 February 2023 Russia conducted the second test launch of the Sarmat ICBM. The test, however, was unsuccessful, reportedly because of the failure of the second stage of the missile. US sources confirmed the failure and reported that Russia notified the United States about the test in advance.
The launch window for the test was set between 15 and 25 February 2023.
The first flight test of the Sarmat ICBM took place in April 2022.
K-553 Generalissimus Suvorov, the sixth submarine of the Project 955 line and the third Project 955A/Borey-A submarine, was officially accepted for service on 29 December 2022. The submarine will join Alexander Nevskiy and Vladimir Monomakh in the Pacific.
Construction of Generalissimus Suvorov began in December 2014. It was launched in December 2021 and began sea trials in July 2022. In November 2022 the submarine performed a successful launch of a Bulava SLBM.
On the same day, the seventh Project 955 submarine, Imperator Alexander III, was launched into water. The construction of strategic submarines is behind schedule. Generalissimus Suvorov and Imperator Alexander III were expected to enter service in 2020.
Tree more submarines of this line are under construction. Knyaz Pozharsky was laid down in December 2016. That is the last submarine built under the original 2012 plan that called for construction of eight Borey/Borey-A submarines. The idea of continuing the production of Borey/Borey-A was discussed at various points of time - the total of ten in 2012, the total of 14. Later in 2018 the decision was made to build two more, bringing the total to ten. The contract with OSK/Sevmash was signed in July 2020. The submarines, Dmitry Donskoy and Knyaz Potemkin, were laid down at Sevamash in August 2021.
UPDATE: The submarine will eventually join the Pacific Fleet.
According to the commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces, Russia conducted four missile launches in 2022 (all of them from Plesetsk) and plans to launch eight missiles in 2023. Some launches will be conducted from the Kapustin Yar test site.
Two of these four launches were conducted as part of strategic exercise - mobile Yars on 19 February 2022 and on 26 October 2022. One launch was the first flight test of the Sarmat ICBM on 20 April 2022.
There was no official announcement of the fourth launch. It is reported to be a test launch of a Sirena-M command missile, based on Yars ICBM, that was conducted in June 2022.
The original plan call for "more than ten launches" in 2022. This is generally in line with the past practice - the actual number of ICBM launches is about half of the projected.
The upcoming launches of ICBMs from Kapustin Yar may be somewhat significant. In these launches an ICBM is normally launched to the Sary-Shagan site in Kazakhstan. The array of radars deployed at Sary-Shagan by the Soviet Union helps collect all kinds of data related to warhead re-entry. The most recent test of this kind took place in November 2019 (there was another one shortly before that, in July 2019). One potential issue is that Kazakhstan is a state party to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in January 2021. The treaty prohibits its parties from assisting anyone in any activity prohibited by the treaty. While ICBMs are not, of course, nuclear weapons, carrying nuclear warheads is their only mission (at least today). One can interpret TPNW provisions in different ways, but I would think that assisting someone in developing better ICBMs is not exactly consistent with the treaty obligations. It is, of course, something for states parties to decide.
The Air and Space Defense Forces conducted a test of the new interceptor of the Moscow missile defense system at the Sary-Shagan test site. According to a VKS representative, "the new interceptor fully confirmed its technical characteristics in a series of tests and the combat crews successfully completed the mission by hitting the notional target with required accuracy." The test appears to have taken place on 1 December 2022.
Previous test of a missile defense interceptor took place in September 2021.
The Air and Space Forces performed a successful launch of a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the launch pad No. 3 of the launch complex No. 43 of the Plesetsk space launch site. The launch took place at 18:17 MSK (15:17 UTC) on 28 November 2022. The satellite that the rocket and its Fregat boost stage delivered into orbit is reported to be a Glonass-M navigation satellite. The satellite has been designated Cosmos-2564. It received international designation 2022-0161A and was registered by NORAD as object No. 54377.
Previous Glonass launch took place in October 2022. However, it was a satellite of a Glonass-K class (as were the other recent Glonass satellites, launched in July 2022 and in October 2020). The last Glonass-M launch took place in March 2020. It has been reported that production of newer Glonass-K satellites was suspended by the western sanctions.
As Sarmat slowly goes through the flight tests (the first one took place in April 2022), construction of silos for the missile has already started. In 2016 the Strategic Rocket Forces announced that Sarmat will be deployed in Uzhur and Dombarovskiy. Earlier, it was reported that the total of 46 missiles will be deployed eventually.
As of October 2022, construction was underway at two silos of the 302nd regiment of the 62nd missile division at Uzhur (h/t BR).
Note that it is a six-missile regiment.
The book
