A clip from the rally was shared on Twitter Saturday morning by Julia Davis, creator of the Russian Media Monitor and a columnist for The Daily Beast. In the video, a man is seen leading a crowd through the streets of Moscow and through chants calling for attacks on Washington. “Hit the decision-making centers,” shouts the man leading the crowd. “To Washington! A flight mission for the Sarmat missile. To Washington! Sarmat, hit the enemy cities. To Washington!…The US is the enemy! We’ll go to heaven as witnesses. They’ll just scream.” The Sarmat missile mentioned during the rally is the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), a thermonuclear weapon added to Russia’s arsenal in 2018 and nicknamed “Satan II”. Meanwhile in Russia: a rally, demanding Moscow hit Washington. Putin’s words are invoked: “We will go to heaven as martyrs and they will just cry.” pic.twitter.com/csQp3KYTTN — Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) November 12, 2022 As Davis tweeted, the rally attendees’ statement “we will go to heaven as witnesses” refers to comments Putin made in 2018. Despite the rally calling for action, the comments they were referring to saw Putin commit that Russia would respond to any nuclear attack against it, but would never be the first to strike in such a way. The comments came shortly after Russia unveiled its expanded nuclear arsenal, which included the Satan II missile. “An aggressor must know that revenge is inevitable, that he will be annihilated and we will be the victims of the attack,” Putin said at the time, according to The Moscow Times. “We will go to heaven as witnesses, and they will fall dead. They won’t even have time to repent of it.” A report last week by the magazine Russian Military Thought claimed that the United States is working on plans to neutralize significant parts of Russia’s nuclear stockpile before the nation can launch a strike. This plan would include the use of non-nuclear weapons by the US, with the report stating that “the United States seeks to possess strategic non-nuclear weapons with a short flight time on target” that are not subject to any bilateral or international restrictions. Above, a wheeled ICBM in Moscow is seen during a Russian military parade. A recent rally in Moscow saw citizens calling on Russia to launch nuclear attacks on Washington, DC Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to prepare for the growing possibility that Russia will deploy nuclear weapons against it in the face of its ever-besieging invasion. On Tuesday, the country’s military took part in drills to prepare for the possibility of a nuclear attack, with drills focused on preparing “to eliminate the consequences of a nuclear strike.” Newsweek has reached out to the Defense Department for comment.
