The new intermediate-range ballistic missile called Oreshnik, used by Russia in the attack on Ukraine, is a nuclear-capable weapon that has not been mentioned publicly before.
In an unscheduled television appearance on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack on the city of Dnipro had tested “one of the latest Russian medium-range missile systems” in a combat situation.
He said missile engineers have named the missile Oreshnik, or hazel tree in Russian.
Putin said it was deployed in a “non-nuclear hypersonic configuration” and said the “test” was successful and hit its target.
pace
Putin said air defense forces cannot stop the Oreshnik, which attacks at a speed of Mach 10, or 2.5-3 kilometers per second.
Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds of at least Mach 5 – five times the speed of sound – and can maneuver mid-flight, making them harder to track and intercept.
Putin said, “Modern air defense systems…cannot stop such missiles. It is impossible.”
The President claimed, “To date there is no means to counter such a weapon.”
Weapon
Military expert Victor Baronets wrote in the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid that the Oreshnik missile could have three to six warheads.
Igor Korotchenko, editor of the Moscow-based National Defense Journal, told the TASS state news agency that based on video footage of the attack, the Oresnik had multiple independently guided weapons.
Military experts said that in this case they were conventional, but could also carry nuclear weapons.
Describing it as “a masterpiece of modern Russian solid-fuel military missile construction”, Korotchenko said the “practically simultaneous arrival of the weapons on target” shows that the system is “very effective”.
Category
Ukrainian media reported that the missile was fired from the Kapustin Yar range in the Astrakhan region, about 900 kilometers (550 mi) from Dnipro.
Putin described the missile as “medium range” in Russian, but Russian military experts said the English term would be “intermediate range”.
An intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) has a strike range of 1,000–5,500 kilometres, which is less than that of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Military expert Ilya Kramnik told Izvestia newspaper that the Oresnik’s range could be at the top end of intermediate, around 3,000 – 5,000 kilometers.
“In any case, we have seen the first combat use in history of an intermediate-range missile by Russia,” Dmitry Kornev, editor of the Military Russia website, told Izvestia.
Original
The US Department of Defense described the Oreshnik as an “experimental” missile based on Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh ICBM.
Little is known about the Rubezh, a modification of the Topol ICBM.
The TASS state news agency, citing a source, reported in 2018 that development of the Rubez was halted under the state weapons program until 2027, so that another system, Avangard, could be prioritized.
Russian weapons expert Yan Matveyev wrote on Telegram that the Oreshnik would likely have two stages and would be “quite expensive”, heavy and not mass-produced.
Threat
Its range means “Oreshnik can threaten practically all of Europe, but not the United States,” weapons expert Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces project, told the Russian Telegram channel Ostrozhno Novosti.
The United States and the Soviet Union signed a treaty in 1987 agreeing to phase out the use of missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
Washington and Moscow both withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, each accusing the other of violations.
Putin said on Thursday that Russia “will resolve the question of further deployment of intermediate- and short-range missiles on the basis of the actions of the United States and its satellites”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
