In April 2021, Putin told the Federal Assembly that the first regiment, “fully equipped with Sarmats,” would enter combat duty at the end of 2022.
June 2022 — after the first successful launch on April 20, Putin repeats: “It is planned that by the end of the year the first such complex will be on combat duty.”
December 2022 — “In the near future, the Sarmats will be put on combat duty for the first time… there is some movement to the right, this does not change our plans.”
February 2023 — Putin says that the Sarmat will be on combat duty by the end of the year.
July 2023 — repeats the promise.
September 2023 — the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, states the Sarmat has already been put on combat duty. However, it follows from his presentation that the production is scheduled only for 2024.
October 2023 — Putin: Russia has “actually finished work” on Sarmat, it remains to “administratively and bureaucratically complete some procedures.”
December 2023 — Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu says Russia has begun deploying missiles.
February 2024 — Putin, in a message to the Federal Assembly, declares that the first mass-produced missiles have already been delivered to the troops.
September 2024 — Sarmat explodes on trials. According to Western media, this is the fifth failed rocket launch.
October 2025 — Putin himself refutes past announcements: “There is no such [rocket] in the world as the Sarmat. And he’s not on duty here yet. It’ll be on duty soon.”
November 4 , 2025 — Putin: “This year we will put it on experimental combat, next year it will be on combat duty.”
May 12, 2026 — Putin promises to put the Sarmat on duty “by the end of this year.”
The only fully successful launch of the Sarmat so far took place on April 20, 2022. Pavel Podvig, the head of the Russian Nuclear Weapons project, said in 2024 that reports of a missile being put on duty should be treated “carefully”: “It is unlikely that anyone would put a missile into service that had only one test.”
In addition to the Sarmat, Putin said today that the Poseidon underwater vehicle and the Burevestnik cruise missile are in the “final stages” of preparation for combat deployment. The story is similar with them: both systems were announced by Putin in a message to the Federal Assembly back in 2018, and none of them reached the stage of putting on duty.
The Burevestnik is a nuclear-powered cruise missile. In August 2019, the explosion at the test site in Nenok with the death of Rosatom employees and a surge in the radiation background, the connection with the Burevestnik has not been officially recognized. In October 2025, Gerasimov reported: the missile stayed in the air for 15 hours, traveled 14 thousand km. Putin admitted at the same time: “there is still a lot of work to put these weapons on combat duty.”
Poseidon is an unmanned underwater vehicle with a nuclear power plant. In February 2019, Putin promised that the first device would “enter service in the spring of 2019.” In April 2019, the Belgorod carrier submarine was launched. It was only on October 28, 2025 that it was possible for the first time launching the device’s nuclear power plant underwater — Putin called it a “huge success.”
