A day after accusing Ukraine of attacking one of Vladimir Putin’s residences with drones, putting into question possible progress in US-led peace negotiations, Russia released this Tuesday (30) images of what it claims to be the deployment of its nuclear-capable Oreshnik hypersonic missile system.
Supposedly installed in Belarus (on the border with Ukraine and NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia), the Russian weaponry would aim to increase Moscow’s ability to attack targets across Europe in the event of war.
According to state news agency TASS, this was the first time the Russian Ministry of Defense displayed the Oreshnik (meaning hazelnut in Russian) missile systems. It is an intermediate-range model (550 to 5,000 kilometers), which employs six to eight independent warheads, in a system in which the missile is divided into several smaller warheads during flight to attack multiple targets.
In November 2024, Russia used the model in an attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro – the country’s fourth largest – apparently without explosives. Putin defined the devices as impossible to intercept, due to their speed ten times that of sound.
These missiles were prohibited by a treaty signed in the Soviet era, which the United States and Russia abandoned in 2019. According to the Russians, the Oreshnik has sufficient range to reach the entire European territory.
The videos released this Tuesday by Russia and Belarus do not make the location of the missile systems clear. The images show crews driving along forest roads, with snow falling lightly, and troops camouflaging systems that a Russian official said had been officially placed on combat duty.
In August, amid escalating tensions with the US, the Russian dictator announced that the Kremlin had begun mass production of the Oreshnik. The move came after United States President Donald Trump said he was positioning two nuclear submarines in “appropriate regions” in response to provocations from a Putin ally.
