Putin, like many other belligerent autocrats, does like his Wunderwaffen, or ‘wonder weapons.’ Now it appears he’s even used one in an act of wasteful overkill in Ukraine: using the hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal (Dagger) missile to apparently destroy an arms depot in western Ukraine.
The Kinzhal was one of the six ‘magic weapons’ Putin unveiled in a moderately-deranged section of his 2018 state-of-the-nation address, which was memorably enlivened by a computer animation of what looked like a nuclear attack on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
As well as the Kinzhal, which along with the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile was already in service, the magic weapons included the Avangard hypersonic nuclear warhead, a truck-based surface-to-air laser system later named Peresvet, and two doomsday weapons, the Poseidon nuclear-armed underwater drone-torpedo and the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile (which could fly around the world, but emit a plume of radioactive exhaust all the way).
Unsubtle references to nuclear systems are intended presumably to make the West temper its support for Ukraine
Only a single Kinzhal had been fired in anger to date, in Syria, and more than anything else as a test of concept.
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