By Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborn
LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin’s launch of a hypersonic Oreshnik missile appears to be aimed at intimidating Ukraine and sending a signal of Russian military might to Europe and the United States at a crucial moment in talks to end the war.
Putin has repeatedly boasted of the speed and destructive power of the Oreshnik, which Russia first fired at Ukraine in November 2024. Since then, it has kept the weapon in reserve.
Oreshnik’s overnight strike in western Ukraine came after a week of Russian setbacks. On Saturday, President Donald Trump sent US special forces to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a close ally of Putin, and on Wednesday US forces seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic.
On Tuesday, Britain and France announced plans to send troops to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire – prompting Moscow to respond that it would view foreign soldiers as legitimate targets of combat.
Gerhard Mangott, a Russia specialist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said Moscow was frustrated at being sidelined during weeks of diplomacy between the United States, Ukraine and the Europeans, and “particularly mad” about the planned potential deployment of troops by Kiev’s European allies. The use of the Oreshnik should be considered in that context, he said.
“It is a signal to the United States and the Europeans about the military capabilities of the Russian army,” Mangott said in a telephone interview.
He said that Moscow wanted to convey that “Russia should be taken seriously, because of its military arsenal, and that the Europeans and Trump should return to a minimum of respect for the Russian position in the negotiations.”
‘UNNECESSARY DESTRUCTION OF THE PURPOSE’
The Oreshnik is capable of carrying nuclear as well as conventional warheads, although there was no suggestion of any nuclear component to the latest attack.
A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters the missile hit a state-owned enterprise in the western city of Lviv and was likely carrying inert warheads or “dummies” – like in 2024, when Russia first fired it to test the weapon in war.
“It seems that at this point Russia is using Oreshnik for signaling purposes, so destruction is not necessarily the goal,” Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, told Reuters when asked if the use of dummy warheads would reduce Moscow’s ability to act to intimidate Ukraine and its allies.
“It is probably a general sign of determination to escalate. My guess is that it will be read this way by the West,” he said.
Western reaction to the attack, about 60 km (40 miles) from Ukraine’s border with NATO member Poland, was swift. The leaders of Great Britain, France and Germany called it “escalating and unacceptable”. The Head of the European Union’s foreign policy Kaja Kallas said that this was “a clear escalation against Ukraine and intended as a warning for Europe and the United States”.
RUSSIAN STATEMENT ON REASON FOR USE OF MISSILES DRAWS SKEPTICISM
Russia specialist Mangott was skeptical of the official statement by Russia’s Defense Ministry that the launch of Oreshnik was in response to an alleged drone attack by Ukraine that targeted one of Putin’s residences, in the northern Novgorod region, late last month. Ukraine has denied that such an attack took place, accusing Moscow of lying about it in order to disrupt peace talks.
Several high-profile Russian war bloggers have also criticized the official framing of the strike as a revenge attack. One, Yuri Baranchik, suggested that it would have “looked more convincing” if Moscow had fired the missile at President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s bunker in Kiev.
Mick Ryan, an Australian military expert, linked the use of the weapon to Russia’s recent setbacks, especially on Venezuela.
He said the point was “to show that Russia remains a nuclear-armed world power. In this guise, it is a psychological weapon – an instrument of Putin’s cognitive war against Ukraine and the West – rather than a weapon of physical mass destruction.”
Russian arch-hawk Dmitry Medvedev, a former president who is now deputy chairman of Putin’s Security Council, in a post on social media alluded to Maduro’s capture, the US seizure of the oil tanker and the possibility of further US sanctions against Russia, which he said had made for a “stormy” start to the year.
In comments that were highly critical of Washington, he said that international relations had descended into a mad place and compared Oreshnik’s strike to a “life-saving injection of haloperidol”, an anti-psychotic drug.
Prominent Russian war blogger Fighterbomber, an ex-serviceman, said he thought the use of the Oreshnik was a show of power to get a message across and that Moscow would not resort to it often.
He noted that some Oreshnik systems had been transferred to Belarus and that Russia would have some in reserve, but suggested that there was not an endless supply of the relatively new missile.
“Taking into account all these constants, we can assume that we can afford to do such demonstrations two or three times a year,” he wrote.
He expressed the hope that no further launches would be necessary for the time being, and concluded: “The signals have been sent and heard.”
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborn in London Editing by Frances Kerry)