The hypersonic missile will be deployed whenever the need arises, the Russian president has said
Moscow is in no hurry to use its latest hypersonic weapon but will not hesitate to do so if needed, President Vladimir Putin stated on Thursday.
The intermediate-range ballistic missile system, dubbed Oreshnik, was first battle-tested last month in a strike against a Ukrainian military factory in the city of Dnepr. A volley of Oreshniks would be more powerful than a tactical nuclear strike but without the radioactive fallout, the Russian military has said.
“We don’t have many of these Oreshnik systems yet, but we do have some,” Putin told reporters on Thursday, after a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in St. Petersburg.
The missiles have already entered serial production, the Russian president added.
“We have more than one system in our inventory, but we are not in a rush to use them, because this is a powerful weapon, designed to address specific problems,” Putin said. “We are acting systematically, but we do not rule out the possibility of using it today or tomorrow, if there is a need.”
Some Oreshniks will indeed be deployed in Belarus, the Russian president said, confirming a statement by his Belarusian colleague Alexander Lukashenko.
“I think it will be ten for now, and then we’ll see,” Lukashenko said earlier on Thursday when asked how many of the state-of-art systems Minsk would like to host. “If Russians want to deploy more, we will host more,” he added.
The new ballistic missile system can carry multiple warheads capable of striking at hypersonic speeds. According to Moscow, the warheads are capable of traveling at ten times the speed of sound and cannot be intercepted by any existing air defenses.
The strike on the Yuzhmash factory on November 21 came after two long-range attacks with US-provided ATACMS missiles on Russian territory, for which Ukraine claimed credit. Putin has previously said that Kiev is not independently capable of such strikes and that they would put NATO in direct confrontation with Russia.
Moscow updated its nuclear doctrine as a message to Washington, but Putin has since said that a nuclear escalation might be unnecessary due to the existence of the Oreshnik.
