AIR FORCE ONE: US President Donald Trump said on Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin should end the war in Ukraine instead of testing a nuclear-powered missile, and that the United States had a nuclear submarine positioned off Russia's coast.
Putin said on Sunday Russia had successfully tested its nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, a nuclear-capable weapon Moscow says can pierce any defence shield, and will move towards deploying the weapon.
Moscow said the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel) had flown for 14,000 km. Asked on Air Force One about the test of the missile, dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall by Nato, Trump said the United States did not need to fly so far as it had a nuclear submarine off the coast of Russia.
"They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shores, so I mean, it doesn't have to go 8,000 miles," Trump told reporters, according to an audio file posted by the White House.
"I don't think it's an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying, either, by the way: You ought to get the war ended, the war that should have taken one week is now in ... its fourth year, that's what you ought to do instead of testing missiles."
Since first announcing the 9M730 Burevestnik in 2018, Putin has cast the weapon as a response to US moves to build a missile defence shield after Washington in 2001 unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and to enlarge the Nato military alliance.
Asked about Trump's remarks, the Kremlin said Russia would be guided by its own national interests but saw no reason for the missile test to strain relations with the White House.
Russia said Monday its troops had captured three more villages in Ukraine, with Moscow trying to press its advantage on the battlefield amid stalled peace efforts.
Moscow's defence ministry said in a social media statement that its forces had seized the settlements of Novomykolaivka and Pryvilne in Zaporizhzhia region, and Yegorivka in Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russia claims the southern Zaporizhzhia region as its own, though has made no formal claim over the Dnipropetrovsk region, which its troops pushed into for the first time earlier this year.
Though it holds an advantage in manpower and weapons on the sprawling front, Russia's territorial advances have been slow and costly.
Over the last year, its army has captured around 6,000 square kilometres, or one per cent of Ukraine's territory, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which works with the Critical Threats Project.
Ukraine's army said over the weekend that around 200 Russian troops had entered the city of Pokrovsk, which Moscow has been trying to encircle and capture for months.
Russia has "concentrated their main attack force" around the city, creating a "difficult" situation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.
Russia is also targeting Kupiansk, a strategically important city in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
After a diplomatic flurry this year and the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in more than three years, efforts to end the war have frozen with little sign of progress.
US President Donald Trump last week scrapped a planned summit with Russia's President Vladimir Putin and hit Moscow with his first significant sanctions package, targeting two top oil companies, after saying he was frustrated that Russia had not halted its offensive. — Agencies
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