Russia boasts using secret laser weapons in Ukraine
- Russian ‘Zadira’ weapon is supposedly designed to target drones, blind reconnaissance systems
- Ukraine’s president mockingly compared news of the lasers to the so-called wonder weapons that Nazi Germany
Russia on Wednesday said it was using a new generation of powerful lasers in Ukraine to burn up drones, deploying some of Moscow’s secret weapons to counter a flood of Western arms.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 unveiled an intercontinental ballistic missile, underwater nuclear drones, a supersonic weapon and a laser weapon.
The information on the laser weapon could not be verified, and no pictures were shown either. A senior US defence official said the US has seen nothing to corroborate Russia’s claims.
Putin mentioned one called Peresvet, named after a medieval Orthodox warrior monk Alexander Peresvet who perished in mortal combat.
Yury Borisov, the deputy prime minister in charge of military development, told a conference in Moscow that Peresvet was already being widely deployed and it could blind satellites up to 1,500km above Earth.
He said there were already more powerful systems than Peresvet that could burn up drones and other equipment. Borisov cited a test on Tuesday which he said had burned up a drone 5km away within five seconds.
