Moscow, October 29, 2025: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday announced that Russia had successfully conducted a test of its nuclear-powered Poseidon super torpedo, calling it a major technological and strategic achievement.
Speaking during a visit to a Moscow hospital to meet soldiers wounded in the Ukraine war, Putin said the test was carried out on Tuesday. “For the first time, we managed not only to launch it with a launch engine from a carrier submarine but also to activate the nuclear power unit, which operated for a certain amount of time,” he said. “There is nothing like this.”
Hailing the test as “a huge success,” Putin asserted that the Poseidon’s destructive capacity surpasses even that of Russia’s most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile, the Sarmat — known to NATO as SS-X-29 or “Satan II.” “The Poseidon’s power significantly exceeds the power of even our most promising Sarmat intercontinental-range missile,” he claimed.
While the Kremlin has disclosed few technical details, military experts describe the Poseidon as an autonomous, nuclear-capable underwater drone designed to carry massive nuclear warheads over long oceanic distances. Analysts believe its detonation could potentially trigger radioactive tsunamis, devastating entire coastal regions.
This test comes as part of Russia’s broader effort to modernize its strategic arsenal amid heightened tensions with the West. Only last week, Putin oversaw a nuclear launch drill and later announced the successful testing of the Burevestnik — another nuclear-powered cruise missile designed to bypass missile defense systems.
Putin first unveiled the Poseidon and Burevestnik projects in 2018, presenting them as strategic countermeasures to the United States’ 2001 withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and Washington’s development of global missile defense networks. Moscow continues to argue that these advanced weapons are essential for maintaining global strategic balance and deterring NATO’s military expansion.
