Pentagon press secretary John Kirby is downplaying Russia's launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile that the Kremlin is counting on as the center of its nuclear strategy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin calls the Sarmat missile uniquely capable of penetrating anti-missile defenses. And Russia's space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin provocatively called Wednesday's test flight “a present to NATO.”

But Kirby said “Russia properly notified the United States under its New START obligations that it planned to test this ICBM. Such testing is routine. It was not a surprise. We did not deem the test to be a threat to the United States or its allies.”