Moscow ups the ante and sends a threatening message with the attack it carried out tonight on energy facilities and drone factories in Ukraine using a nuclear-capable missile. This is the hypersonic projectile Oreshnika weapon whose production was announced just a few months ago, and which at the end of December was deployed in Belarus, precisely to reinforce Russia’s ability to attack targets throughout Europe.
A few days before, on December 17, the president of the country, Vladimir Putinpraised the new weapon before the senior staff of the Army and of Ministry of Defensein a speech in which he used the term “little pigs” to refer to European leaders.
According to information provided by Russia, the Oreshnik It is capable of reaching Brussels in just 17 minutes thanks to its speed of up to Mach 20, more than 12,300 kilometers per hour. Its range ranges between 1,000 and just over 5,500 kilometers and it weighs between 30 and 40 tons spread over its just over 15 meters in length and 1.86 meters in diameter.
This is a type of weapon that has been possible to develop after the abandonment of the INF nuclear disarmament treaty in 2019 in response to Trump’s previous announcement that he was going to withdraw from this agreement made in October 2018, during his first term as head of the US Government.
The Russian Defense Ministry has issued a statement in which it states that its forces launched in the early hours of Friday “a massive attack with long-range, high-precision land and sea weapons, including the medium-range mobile land-based missile system.” Oreshnik“The attack has left at least four people dead and around twenty injured, according to the agency. Europa Press.
Different media outlets suggest that the use of this missile in tonight’s attack is a response to the one that occurred a few days ago at one of Putin’s residences, specifically in the Novgorod region, and for which Ukraine has denied responsibility. Furthermore, it arrives after the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenskiwarned of the risk of a massive attack by Russia after the rejection of the European plan to deploy a multinational force in Ukraine following a possible end-of-war agreement.
Russia has already used the Oreshnik to attack the Ukrainian city of Dnieper on November 21, 2024, as Putin himself stated then, although Ukraine denied it, stating that it may have been a missile Cedarand pointed out that there was not much chance that it was the new weapon.
