Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky laughed at Russia's claims that it was now using powerful lasers to burn up drones by comparing it to Nazi propaganda over a new weapon in WW2.
Zelensky compared news of the lasers to the so-called wonder weapons that Nazi Germany unveiled in a bid to prevent defeat.
"The clearer it became that they had no chance in the war, the more propaganda there was about an amazing weapon that would be so powerful as to ensure a turning point," he said in a late night video address.
"And so we see that in the third month of a full-scale war, Russia is trying to find its 'wonder weapon' ... this all clearly shows the complete failure of the mission."
Vladimir Putin had unveiled an intercontinental ballistic missile, underwater nuclear drones, a supersonic weapon and a laser weapon back in 2018.
Little is known about the specifics of the new laser that Russia had in Ukraine after it announced on Wednesday that it was using a new generation of powerful lasers.
Putin had 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 1,500 km above Earth.
But he also said there were already more powerful systems than Peresvet that could burn up drones and other equipment.
And he cited a test on Tuesday which he said had burned up a drone 5 km away within five seconds.
"If Peresvet blinds, then the new generation of laser weapons lead to the physical destruction of the target - thermal destruction, they burn up," he told Russian state television.
Asked if such weapons were being used in Ukraine, Borisov said: "Yes. The first prototypes are already being used there."
He said the weapon was called "Zadira".
Almost nothing is publicly known about Zadira but in 2017 Russian media said state nuclear corporation Rosatom helped develop it as part of a programme to create weapons-based new physical principles.
The invasion of Ukraine has illustrated the limits of Russia's post-Soviet conventional armed forces, even though Putin says the "special military operation" is going to plan.
Using lasers to blind satellites was once a fantasy from the realm of science fiction, but the United States, China and Russia have been working on variants of such weapons for years.
Besides the benefit of burning up drones, blinding reconnaissance systems has a strategic impact too as satellites are used to monitor intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear weapons.
Borisov said he had just returned from Sarov, which is a centre of Russia's nuclear weapons research. He said a new generation of laser weapons using a wide electromagnetic band would ultimately replace conventional weapons.
"This is not some sort of exotic idea; it is the reality," Borisov said.
