'Now you will listen': Putin claims new nuclear weapons can bypass any missile defense system

The Putin presentation marked "a mix of old and new news," said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, a British defense think tank. "This is an election speech he was making," said Chalmers, noting that the United States and Russia have for decades had the ability to overwhelm each other's defenses with a massive nuclear strike aimed at multiple cities — but with the deterrent factor that such a strike would be met in kind while missiles were still in the air.