Vladimir Putin has said that Russia has tested the ‘Poseidon’ – a nuclear torpedo that his propagandists claimed could drown Britain under a 1,600ft wave of radioactive seawater.

Russia began producing the first warheads for the ‘Doomsday’ weapon in 2023, warning its enemies that they are ‘practically indestructible.’

The president said today: ‘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.’

Describing it as a ‘huge success’, he repeated again that there is ‘no way to intercept’ the drone.

Whether this is true – or part of Russia’s never-ending misinformation campaign – it is a message the West won’t be ignoring.

Both US and Russian officials have described Poseidon as an entirely new category of retaliatory weapon.

They have said it is capable of triggering radioactive seawater swells to render entire coastal cities uninhabitable.

Putin also claimed the power of the Poseidon exceeded the 35-metre-long Sarmat intercontinental missile, which has been referred to in past reporting by various media outlets in and outside of Russia as ‘Satan II’.

This comes after the 73-year-old held a nuclear launch drill last week – and on Sunday announced that Russia successfully tested the Burevestnik.

The nuclear-powered cruise missile is designed to bypass existing defence systems, the Kremlin claims.

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

What do we know about the Poseidon?

There are few confirmed details about the Poseidon in the public domain – just the way the Kremlin likes it.

The entire project has been shrouded in secrecy ever since 2015, when it was leaked and broadcast on Russian TV, whether purposefully or not.

Generally, many are dubious about the legitimacy of its existence and its power.

Poseidon is essentially a very large, nuclear-powered autonomous torpedo armed with a nuclear warhead.

Its mission statement said that it is focused on ‘damaging the important components of the adversary’s economy in a coastal area and inflicting unacceptable damage to a country’s territory by creating areas of wide radioactive contamination that would be unsuitable for military, economic, or other activity for long periods of time’.

The torpedo is about 65ft long, and can reach speeds of 115mph.

It can navigate autonomously, and may even have the ability to be remotely redirected.

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