Cold War

In February, some creative prisoners at Omsk’s Corrective Colony No. 6 decided to sculpt a full-scale model of a Topol-M mobile, intercontinental missile launcher.

Out of snow.

And then they painted it green.

It turns out that February 8 was the 35th anniversary of the first successful test launch of a Topol-M based missile.

The first test launch, a few months prior, on October 27, 1982, had been unsuccessful.

That first attempt, by the way, was one day before the twentieth anniversary of the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Public sources indicate that Russia has 37 such Topol-M systems in deployment (not counting the one that will soon melt), but they are being phased out through 2021 due to their advanced age.