As the United States tightens its stance on Russia and pressures it to end the war in Ukraine instead of testing nuclear weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin, ignoring Donald Trump, announced on Wednesday, October 29, that Moscow had successfully tested the Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo, which is “uninterceptable.”
The ‘Poseidon’ is basically a nuclear hybrid between a torpedo and a drone.
Vladimir Putin has previously flexed his nuclear muscles in public with a test of the new Burevestnik cruise missile on October 21 and a nuclear launch exercise on October 22.
When Vladimir Putin announced the second test of a nuclear-powered underwater drone in a week, he said: “Yesterday, another test of another promising system was carried out – the unmanned underwater device ‘Poseidon’. For the first time, we managed not only to launch it with a launch engine from a carrier submarine, but also to start a nuclear power plant, on which this device passed a certain time.”
“There is no such thing,” he said, adding that there was no way to capture Poseidon.
The Burevestnik and Poseidon tests are supposed to send a clear message that, according to Putin, Russia will never bow to Western pressure over the war in Ukraine.
How did Trump react after the first nuclear test?
After Putin announced last week that Russia had tested its nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile, Donald Trump bluntly responded that the Russian president should end the war in Ukraine instead of testing a nuclear-powered missile. He also added that the United States has a nuclear submarine stationed off the Russian coast.
Donald Trump said: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for Putin to say, by the way: You should end the war, a war that was supposed to last one week is now in its…fourth year, that’s what you should be doing instead of testing missiles.”
“They know we have a nuclear submarine, the largest in the world, right off their shores, so I don’t think they need to go 8,000 miles,” Trump said.
Asked about Trump’s remarks, the Kremlin said Russia would pursue its own national interests but saw no reason for the missile test to strain relations with the White House.
“Despite all our openness to establishing a dialogue with the United States, Russia and the president of Russia are guided by our own national interests,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “So it was, so it is, and so it shall be.”
The Kremlin said Russia was ensuring its own security by developing new weapons.
