Speaking at the award ceremony for the designers of Burevestnik and Poseidon, the Russian president mentioned another strategic system, Sarmat:

This year, we will put the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile system through combat trials, and next year, deploy it on combat duty.

The official translation is somewhat inaccurate as he didn't say "will put through combat trials." It was "will put on experimental combat duty," which is a different concept. "Combat trials" gives an impression of a program that involves test launches. The "experimental combat duty" would not involve anything of this kind. It is a fairly common practice that goes back to the Soviet days. Normally, it means that a system is turned over to the military with the idea that designers continue to work on it while it is already deployed.

Sarmat has been in development for quite some time. It surfaced in 2010 and the contract was awarded to the Makeyev Design Bureau in 2011. The optimistic projections made in 2013 put the deployment date in 2018-2020. The program, however, fell seriously behind the schedule. So far, there was only one successful flight test of the missile, in April 2022. The biggest setback was the explosion in September 2024 that destroyed the Yubileynaya test silo at the Plesetsk test site.

Meanwhile, the preparations for deployment at the Uzhur missile division are well underway (as documented by the FAS team in a recent post). It is quite likely that by the end of 2025 one Sarmat missile will be placed in one of the silos. This could certainly count as an "experimental combat duty."

It would be rather unusual (to put it mildly) if the missile is accepted for service without further flight tests. As of November 2025, there are no signs that the silo at Plesetsk is being restored, so it's not clear what the plan is. One option would be to do a flight test from Uzhur, where the missile is to be deployed. It is not clear, however, whether there are designated stage impact areas for launches from Uzhur.

The bottom line is that there is a good chance we will see Sarmat in Uzhur in 2025. I would be much more skeptical about the prospect of Sarmat starting full combat duty in 2026, though. For this to happen, the missile must demonstrate that it can fly. On the other hand, if it's just sitting in a silo, does it really matter?

Image: Google Earth image (2024) of one of the silos at Uzhur (55.034722, 89.729583) prepared for the deployment of Sarmat.