Ukraine-Russia war live: Zelensky says Putin is ‘afraid’ as Moscow suffers Satan II missile failure

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine was “closer to the end of the war” with Russia than many people realise.

Mr Zelensky is currently in Washington DC to attend the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly. He added Vladimir Putin is “afraid” of Ukraine’s Kursk operation, in which it has taken more than 1,000 square km of Russian territory.

“I think that we are closer to peace than we think,” he told ABC in an interview that is due to be released in full on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been adamant peace talks will only begin if Kyiv abandons swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine to Russia and drops its NATO membership ambitions.

It comes as Russia appears to have suffered a “catastrophic failure” in a test of its Sarmat (Satan II) missile, a key weapon in the modernisation of its nuclear arsenal.

The Satan II missile is designed to deliver nuclear warheads to strike targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe, but its development has been dogged by delays and testing setbacks, according to arms experts.

The 35-metre-long RS-28 Sarmat has a range of 18,000 km (11,000 miles) and a launch weight of over 208 tonnes.

The RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile is designed to deliver nuclear warheads to strike targets thousands of miles away in the United States or Europe, but its development has been dogged by delays and testing setbacks.

The 35-metre-long RS-28 Sarmat, known in the West as Satan II, has a range of 18,000 km (11,000 miles) and a launch weight of over 208 tonnes.

Russian media say it can carry up to 16 independently targetable nuclear warheads as well as Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, a new system that Putin has said is