We all knew that Russia had an anti-missile defense system, right??
Yes. The later S-300 and S-400 systems can intercept missiles.
They don’t. The missile has no chance of veering towards Siberia. Therefore the russkies can make any claim they want and no they won’t have to back it up. ABM technology is not about hardware, it’s about marrying hardware to advanced detection, tracking, and targeting software. The Russiansa are multi generations behind the computer tech needed to achieve what the USN can do with a modified Standard missile.
The first real and successful ABM hit-to-kill test was conducted by the Soviet PVO forces on March 1, 1961. An experimental V-1000 missile (part of the "A" ABM programme) launched from the Sary-Shagan test range, destroyed a dummy warhead released by a R-12 ballistic missile launched from the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome. The dummy warhead was destroyed by the impact of 18 thousand tungsten-carbide spherical impactors 140 seconds after launch, at an altitude of 25 km. The V-1000 missile system was nonetheless considered not reliable enough and abandoned in favor of nuclear-tipped ABMs.
The only other ICBM ABM system to reach production was the Soviet A-35 system. It was initially a single-layer exoatmospheric (outside the atmosphere) design, using the Galosh (SH-01/ABM-1) interceptor. It was deployed at four sites around Moscow in the early 1970s.
Originally intended to be a larger deployment, the system was downsized to the two sites allowed under the 1972 ABM treaty. It was upgraded in the 1980s to a two-layer system, the A-135. The Gorgon (SH-11/ABM-4) long-range missile was designed to handle intercepts outside the atmosphere, and the Gazelle (SH-08/ABM-3) short-range missile endoatmospheric intercepts that eluded Gorgon. ABM-3 was considered to be technologically equivalent to the United States Safeguard system of the 1970s
Russia has the S-300, the S-400, and for taking on MIRV’d ICBM’s, a nuclear tipped warhead interceptor system. And that doesn’t include any satellite or laser weaponry the Russians have at their disposal.