By Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborn
LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin’s launch of a hypersonic Oreshnik missile appears aimed at intimidating Ukraine and sending a signal of Russian military power 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 over Ukraine in November 2024. Since then, it has kept the weapon in reserve.
The overnight Oreshnik strike in western Ukraine came after a week of setbacks for Russia. On Saturday, President Donald Trump sent US special forces to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a close associate 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 deploy troops to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire – prompting Moscow to respond that it would consider foreign soldiers as legitimate combat targets.
Gerhard Mangott, a Russia specialist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said Moscow was frustrated at being left out of weeks of diplomacy between the US, Ukraine and the Europeans and “particularly upset” by the possible troop deployment planned by Kiev’s European allies. Oreshnik’s use should be seen in that context, he said.
“It’s a signal to the United States and the Europeans about the military capabilities of the Russian military,” Mangott said in a telephone interview.
He said Moscow wanted to convey that “Russia must be taken seriously, given its military arsenal, and that the Europeans and Trump should return to a modicum of respect for Russia’s position in the negotiations.”
“DESTRUCTION NOT NECESSARILY THE GOAL”
The Oreshnik is capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads, although there was no suggestion of any nuclear components in the latest attack.
A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters the missile hit a state-owned enterprise in the western city of Lviv and likely had inert or “dummy” warheads — like in 2024, when Russia first fired to test the weapon in war.
“It appears that at the moment Russia is using the 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 diminish Moscow’s ability to act to intimidate Ukraine and its allies.
“It’s probably a general signal of determination to escalate. I suspect it will be read that 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 Britain, France and Germany called it “escalating and unacceptable”. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said it was “a clear escalation against Ukraine and meant as a warning to Europe and the US”.
RUSSIAN STATEMENT ON REASON FOR MISSILE USE Draws skepticism
Russia specialist Mangott was skeptical of the Russian Defense Ministry’s official statement that the Oreshnik launch was in response to an alleged Ukrainian drone strike targeting one of Putin’s residences in the northern Novgorod region late last month. Ukraine has denied that any such attack took place, accusing Moscow of lying about it to derail peace talks.
Several Russian war bloggers also criticized the official framing of the strike as a revenge attack. One of them, Yuri Baranchik, suggested it would have “looked more convincing” if Moscow had fired a 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 failures, particularly with respect to Venezuela.
He said the aim was “to demonstrate that Russia remains a nuclear-armed world power. In this form, it is a psychological weapon – a tool of Putin’s cognitive warfare against Ukraine and the West – rather than a weapon of physical mass destruction.”
Russian Archduke Dmitry Medvedev, a former president who is now deputy chairman of Putin’s Security Council, alluded in a social media post to Maduro’s capture, the US seizure of the oil tanker and the possibility of new US sanctions against Russia, which he said made for a “stormy” start to the year.
In highly critical comments about Washington, he said international relations had reached a madhouse and compared the Oreshnik strike to “a life-saving injection of haloperidol,” an antipsychotic drug.
Prominent Russian war blogger Fighterbomber, a former military man, said he believed using Oreshnik was a show of force to get a message across and that Moscow would not use it often.
He noted that some Oreshnik systems have been transferred to Belarus and that Russia will have some of its own in reserve, but suggested that there is 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 hope that no further releases would be needed for the time being, concluding: “The signals have been sent and they have been heard.”
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborn in London Editing by Frances Kerry)