Russia will use its new hypersonic missile “Oreshnik”, fired for the first time last week at a Ukrainian city, to attack “decision-making centres” in Kyiv in response to Western missile strikes on Russian territory by Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, the 28th of November, claiming that no air defence would be able to intercept it, a claim that Western experts are sceptical about, reports Reuters.
Russia has so far not attacked Ukrainian government ministries, parliament or the presidential office during the 33-month war.
“Of course, we will respond to the ongoing strikes on Russian territory with Western-made long-range missiles, as has already been said, including possibly continuing to test the Oreshnik in combat conditions, as was done on the 21st of November,” Putin told leaders of the security alliance of former Soviet states at a summit in Kazakhstan.
“At the moment, the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff are choosing targets to attack on Ukrainian territory. These could be military facilities, defence and industrial enterprises or decision-making centres in Kyiv,” he said.
Putin claimed that Russia has some experimental “Oreshnik” missiles ready for use – in line with comments by US military officials – and boasted of their destructive power, saying they would shatter everything on impact, adding that they would not carry nuclear warheads or spread radioactive contamination.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned Putin’s “promotion” of “Oresnik” as a tactic to thwart attempts to end the war.
“He is not trying to end this war. Moreover, Putin wants to prevent others from ending the war”, Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address, accusing Putin of escalating the war to undermine future peace efforts and of trying to derail President Trump’s attempts to end the conflict that “will surely follow his inauguration”.
Putin said Russia’s overnight mass attack on Ukraine, which used cluster munitions and knocked out power to more than one million people, was a response to the use of US ATACMS missiles by Kyiv, with Zelenskyy condemning it as a “despicable escalation”.
Zelenskyy also said he was talking to Western leaders, including NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to work out a response to “Russia’s attempt to make the situation even more unbearable and to drag the war on”.
Russia claims that Ukraine fired ATACMS missiles for the first time at western Russia on the 19th of November, which led it to retaliate two days later by firing a new Oreshnik missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Ukraine claimed that the Oreshnik missile fired on the 21st of November reached a top speed of 13 600 km/h, but sources said it carried dummy warheads, not live explosives.
The US and UK last week allowed Kyiv to use ATACMS and the British Storm Shadow to strike deep into Russia.
Putin reiterated during the summit that the use of Western missiles, from Moscow’s point of view, means the West’s “direct involvement” in an armed conflict with Russia.
Putin also said that Russia’s production of advanced missile systems is ten times NATO’s and that Moscow plans to increase it.
Tensions have risen with the missile strikes and the extension of Russia’s nuclear response criteria, but US intelligence sources say that allowing Ukraine to conduct deeper strikes with US weapons has not increased the risk of a nuclear attack, which remains unlikely.