Vladimir Putin has announced the successful test of Russia's Poseidon nuclear-propelled torpedo drone, a weapon described by arms control experts as a new category of retaliatory weapon capable of triggering a radioactive tsunami. Speaking to wounded soldiers in Ukraine, Putin said the test took place on Tuesday, involving both the launch engine and the nuclear power unit. He called it a 'huge success' and claimed the weapon's power exceeds that of Russia's Sarmat intercontinental missile.
The Poseidon is launched from a submarine like a torpedo but can loiter as an underwater drone before attacking with its nuclear warhead. US and Russian officials have both said it is designed to render coastal cities uninhabitable. The announcement follows Putin's Sunday claim of a successful test of the Burevestnik missile, another nuclear-powered weapon that critics have dubbed a 'flying Chernobyl'.
On the ground in Ukraine, the situation around the eastern city of Pokrovsk is described as 'critical' by open-source analysts, with Russian forces intensifying advances. Ukraine's military rejected Putin's claims that Ukrainian forces were surrounded in Pokrovsk and Kupiansk, calling the latter 'fantasies' and saying supply lines to Pokrovsk remain intact. However, the DeepState project reported that Russia had broken a logistics route to neighbouring Myrnohrad using infantry ambushes and drone attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Pokrovsk area was the most difficult along the 1,250km frontline, with intense combat and a strong concentration of Russian forces. He added that the situation around Kupiansk had improved in recent days. Meanwhile, a Russian strike on a children's hospital in southern Ukraine wounded at least nine people, including four children, the youngest aged eight. Zelenskyy condemned the attack, saying the perpetrators could not have been unaware of their target.
In Russia, the death toll from an explosion at a military factory in Kopeysk rose to 23 after search and rescue operations concluded. The cause of the 22 October blast at the Plastmass plant, which produces explosives for the Russian army, has not been disclosed. In Ukraine, a Kyiv court ordered the detention of Volodymyr Kudrytsky, the former head of state energy operator Ukrenergo, on embezzlement charges. Kudrytsky's dismissal last year was criticised as politically motivated, and some lawmakers have offered to guarantee his bail.
