London - 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. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia’s reported use of “laser weapons” in its invasion of his country is a sign of their failure.

Putin had earlier talked about a laser weapon called  Peresvet, named after a medieval Orthodox warrior monk Alexander Peresvet who perished in mortal combat. Yury Borisov, 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.

The Russians are searching for a “wunder-waffe” President Zelensky mockingly claimed. It was a reference to the hunt for a wonder weapon that would turn the tide of World War Two while the Nazis were losing on the battlefield.

"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.

Zelensky spoke just hours after the Russian deputy prime minister, Borisov claimed secret laser technology in use in Ukraine.

Borisov's remarks indicate Russia has made significant progress with laser weapons, a trend of considerable interest to other nuclear powers such as the United States and China.

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.

Blinding reconnaissance systems has a strategic impact too as satellites are used to monitor intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear weapons.

-Reuters/BBC