Ukrainian security services destroyed Russia’s Oreshnik missile that has a range of around 5,000 kilometers, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a press briefing on October 31.
The long-range missile was hit by Ukrainian Ukraine’s Security Service and Defence Intelligence Directorate at Kapustin Yar training ground in Astrakhan region last year, Zelenskiy said, without revealing when the operation was carried out.
“We have never announced this before. But briefly and concisely we can say that one of the three Oreshniks was successfully destroyed on their [Russian] territory,” chief of Ukraine’s Security Service, SBU, Vasyl Maliuk Malyuk said. The SBU chief said apart from commander-in-chief Zelenskiy, a number of world leader had been informed about the “100%” destruction of one of Russia’s three Oreshnik missiles. In his word, "when the name Oreshnik was not yet widely known or used, and the Russians at that time were not particularly threatened by it."
Meanwhile, Zelenskiy said Oreshnik systems will be deployed in Russia’s proxy Belarus by the end of the year. Earlier in September, Zelenskiy claimed that the missiles were supposedly on their way to Belarus. He said Russians still have the capacity to launch up to six Oreshnik missiles," the Ukrainian president said.
It should be note that Russia first used its Oreshnik missile against Ukraine in November last year, striking a defence enterprise in Dnipro, more than a year after Ukraine’s reported destruction of one of the missiles.
The Oreshnik is likely a modification of the RS-26 Rubezh missile. There is limited open-source information about the missile.
According to Ukrainian intelligence reports, Russia produced three Oreshnik missiles this year and plans to double the production to six. Meanwhile, Zelenskiy called on Western partners to impose sanctions on 25 companies that he said were involved in production of Oreshnik missiles.
It should be noted that Russian Vladimir Putin has said Oreshnik is impossible to intercept and has power comparable to a nuclear weapon.
