Everything you wanted to know about the new Russian missile for which the U.S. and the rest of the West have no defenses. From Dmitry Kornev at swentr.site:
Why Russia doesn’t need to go nuclear to make its point – and how Oreshnik makes that clear
Just before dawn on November 21, 2024, a fireball streaked across the sky over the Dnieper River. It wasn’t a meteor. It wasn’t a drone.
The explosion that followed – precise, deep, and eerily silent on the surface – tore through the massive Yuzhmash defense facility in southeastern Ukraine. Footage of the strike spread within hours, picked apart by open-source analysts and intelligence services alike. But it wasn’t until Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed it that the world had a name for what it had witnessed:
Oreshnik – a new kind of Russian ballistic missile.
Capable of reaching speeds above Mach 10, surviving reentry temperatures of 4,000C, and delivering kinetic force that rivals tactical nuclear weapons, the Oreshnik isn’t just fast. It’s different.
In less than a year, it has moved from classified prototype to serial production, with confirmed plans for forward deployment in Belarus by the end of 2025. Its emergence suggests that Russia is rewriting the rules of strategic deterrence – not with treaty-breaking escalation, but with something quieter, subtler, and potentially just as decisive.
So what exactly is the Oreshnik missile? Where did it come from, what are its capabilities – and how might it reshape the battlefield?
RT explains what’s known so far about Russia’s latest breakthrough in non-nuclear strategic weaponry.
How the Oreshnik works
The missile that struck the Yuzhmash facility in Dnepropetrovsk (known in Ukraine as Dnipro) left behind no scorched landscape, no flattened perimeter. Instead, analysts examining satellite imagery noted a narrow impact zone, structural collapse below ground level, and almost surgical surface disruption. It wasn’t the scale of destruction that stood out – it was its shape.
And Vlad plays it close to the vest.
Cross that Dnieper and we’ll have your nuts over the fire.
It’s good to have a trump card.