Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia had tested a Poseidon nuclear-powered super autonomous torpedo and that it had been a great success.

There are few confirmed details about the Poseidon in the public domain but it is essentially an autonomous nuclear-capable torpedo which is capable of triggering radioactive ocean swells to render coastal cities uninhabitable.

Putin, drinking tea with Russian soldiers wounded in the Ukraine war at a hospital in Moscow, said that the test had taken place on Tuesday.

"For the first time, we managed not only to launch it with a launch engine from a carrier submarine, but also to launch the nuclear power unit on which this device passed a certain amount of time," Putin said. "There is nothing like this."

"This is a huge success," Putin said, adding that the power of the Poseidon exceeded the Sarmat intercontinental missile, known as SS-X-29, or simply Satan II.

"The Poseidon's power significantly exceeds the power of even our most promising Sarmat intercontinental range missile," Putin said.

Putin last week held a nuclear launch drill and on Sunday announced that Russia has successfully tested its nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, a nuclear-capable weapon Moscow says can pierce any defence shield.

Since first announcing the Poseidon and Burevestnik in 2018, Putin has cast them as a response to moves by the United States to build a missile defence shield after Washington in 2001 unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and to enlarge the NATO military alliance.

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