Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia had successfully tested the nuclear-powered Poseidon super torpedo, which military analysts say is capable of devastating coastal regions by triggering vast radioactive waves in the ocean.
While US President Donald Trump has toughened both his rhetoric and stance on Russia, Putin has publicly flexed his nuclear muscles with the test of a new Burevestnik cruise missile on October 21 and nuclear launch exercises on October 22.
There are few confirmed details about the Poseidon, which is named after the ancient Greek god of the sea, but it is essentially a nuclear-capable cross between a torpedo and a drone.
Putin, over tea and pastries at a Moscow hospital with Russian soldiers wounded in the Ukraine war, said the test had been carried out on Tuesday.
“For the first time we managed not only to launch it with a launch engine from a transport submarine, but also to launch the nuclear power unit in which this device spent a certain time,” Putin said.
“There is nothing like this,” he said, adding that there was no way to intercept the Poseidon, which analysts believe has a range of 10,000 kilometers and can travel at about 185 kilometers per hour.
The Burevestnik and Poseidon tests are intended to send a clear message that Russia, in Putin’s words, will never give in to Western pressure for war in Ukraine.
For Trump, who has called Russia a “paper tiger” for failing to quickly subdue Ukraine, the message is that Russia remains a global military competitor, especially in nuclear weapons, and that Moscow’s proposals on nuclear arms control must be acted on.
Poseidon and the new nuclear arms race
The Poseidon is a new weapon that has appeared in the midst of what Putin has described as a global arms race – mainly between the United States, Russia and China – to modernize and develop their nuclear arsenals.
Poseidon, known in NATO as Kanyon, is 20 meters long, 1.8 meters in diameter and weighs 100 tons, according to Russian media.
Arms control experts say the weapon breaks most traditional nuclear deterrence and classification rules. They have estimated that it would carry a two-megaton warhead and perhaps be powered by a liquid metal-cooled reactor. Putin said Poseidon’s power exceeded that of “even our most promising Sarmat intercontinental-range missile,” known as SS-X-29, or Satan II.
Since first announcing the Poseidon and Burevestnik in 2018, Putin has presented them as a response to US moves to build a missile defense shield after Washington in 2001 unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, as well as NATO’s eastward enlargement.
After Russia’s Burevestnik test, Trump said Putin should end the war in Ukraine rather than test a nuclear-powered missile.
