Introducing the Oreshnik What Russia’s ‘new’ ballistic missile means for Ukraine and nuclear security
Nearly two weeks ago, Russia launched a strategic ballistic missile at Ukraine, marking the first time in history such a weapon was used in combat. President Vladimir Putin claimed the strike was carried out with a new missile boasting extraordinary capabilities and framed it as retaliation for the U.S. and U.K. authorizing Kyiv’s longer-range strikes inside Russia using Western-made missiles. Though Putin warned the strike wasn’t the last of its kind, Russia hasn’t launched another Oreshnik at Ukraine since. Meduza explains what we know about Russia’s “new” weapon, why it hasn’t been used again, and how dangerous these missiles are — even without nuclear warheads.
What kind of missile did Russia use?
The exact type of missile used remains unknown. Russian President Vladimir Putin described it as a new weapon called “Oreshnik,” claiming it has rather extraordinary characteristics. According to Putin:
- It’s a strategic medium-range missile, but it doesn’t carry a nuclear payload
- Its warheads lack explosive material, destroying targets (including fortified ones) through kinetic energy, “like a meteorite”
- The missile and its warheads are impossible to intercept, as they approach their targets at a speed of Mach 10
Of all these claims, only one is certain: a medium-range ballistic missile (with a range of up to 5,000 kilometers, or 3,100 miles) was used in the attack. Officially, Russia didn’t have such a weapon before 2019, as their development was prohibited under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) between the U.S. and the USSR. Until 2018, Moscow maintained an appearance of compliance with the treaty, though the U.S. alleged that the RS-26 Rubezh, which Russia classified as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), didn’t meet the treaty’s definition.
Under the INF Treaty, an intercontinental missile must have a minimum range of more than 5,000 kilometers. However, the U.S. argued that the Rubezh — a shorter version of the Yars ICBM with one fewer stage — could strike at shorter distances. Citing this and similar alleged violations, Washington withdrew from the INF Treaty in 2018. Russia subsequently pledged not to place such missiles on operational standby, though it still planned to produce them.
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The range issue is critical for Russia: medium-range missiles are effective for threatening E.U. countries and NATO assets in Europe. This likely drove the Kremlin to semi-openly violate the INF Treaty. At the same time, Moscow remains concerned about medium-range missiles launched from Europe, as their shorter flight times drastically reduce the window for a response.
Officially, Russia halted work on the Rubezh in 2018, with funding reportedly redirected to other priorities. However, by then, the missile had already completed part of its testing program. Most experts are inclined to believe that the Oreshnik missile Russia used to strike Dnipro is a modified Rubezh. The fact that both Rubezh and Oreshnik were developed by the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology supports this theory.
Putin, however, insists that the Oreshnik is an entirely new design by Russian engineers, and the military claims it was developed in just one year. Meanwhile, Ukrainian intelligence speculates that the strike may have been carried out with a Kedr missile — a medium-range system slated to begin development in 2024, with deployment planned for the end of the decade.
Is the Oreshnik really as formidable as Putin says?
Footage of the strike on Dnipro clearly shows that the missile carried a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) — several warheads housed in an autonomous deployment module (known informally in the U.S. as a “bus”). The footage also supports Putin’s claim that the warheads contained no explosive material, as no explosions were visible at the impact sites.
However, low-resolution satellite images released later don’t corroborate Putin’s statement that the target — the Yuzhmash weapons factory in Dnipro — was “reduced to fragments, elementary particles, essentially turned to dust.” Some warheads landed in a nearby residential area, while others merely punctured holes in the factory roofs. The extent of the interior damage remains unclear, but it is unlikely to exceed what conventional munitions, frequently used to bomb Yuzhmash, would have caused.
The Russian government portal Obyasnyaem.rf, echoing Putin, reported that the payload capacity of the Oreshnik missile system is 1.5 tons (compared to approximately 1.2 tons for the intercontinental Yars missile, which, as noted earlier, served as the model for the Rubezh). An MIRV on the Yars or Rubezh carries four warheads, meaning each warhead weighs no more than 300 kilograms (660 pounds). At a speed of Mach 10, its kinetic energy would equal 1,736,000,000 joules — equivalent to the explosive force of 400 kilograms (882 pounds) of TNT. For comparison, the high-explosive fragmentation warhead of the Iskander-M missile weighs 480 kilograms (more than 1,000 pounds) and contains several hundred kilograms of explosive material.
For further comparison, the U.S. once proposed a “kinetic weapon” concept called “Rods from God,” which envisioned dropping 35-ton tungsten rods from orbit at Mach 10 to strike fortified bunkers. The resulting energy would be equivalent to an explosion of 48 tons of TNT. However, according to media reports, Chinese experiments later cast doubt on the presumed high penetration capability of such weapons, as the tungsten projectiles reportedly “burst” at shallow depths immediately after impact. While Meduza was unable to locate scientific studies showing these results, such issues with hypersonic warhead behavior are well-documented. Counterintuitively, improving penetration requires slowing the warhead down before impact.
Even if the full kinetic energy of the Oreshnik/Rubezh warhead were directed at the target, its effects would be similar to those of several Iskander-M missiles equipped with high-explosive fragmentation warheads. Meanwhile, a single Iskander missile is estimated to cost about $3 million, compared to the Yars ICBM, a distant relative of the Oreshnik, which was thought to cost approximately $30 million in 2011.
But all these comparisons only hold if the Oreshnik has accuracy comparable to the Iskander-M. For relatively small non-nuclear warheads to effectively strike fortified targets, missiles must achieve single-digit meter accuracy (CEP, or circular error probable). Iskander missiles reportedly have a CEP of five meters (16.4 feet). Strategic missiles, by contrast, aren’t designed for such precision. Without extensive and technically complex modifications, their inherent lack of accuracy makes them a questionable choice for non-nuclear configurations.
Most ballistic missiles with ranges of thousands of kilometers have a CEP exceeding 100 meters (about 330 feet), and in the best cases, tens of meters. While increased accuracy can reduce the need for large nuclear payloads, trying to achieve single-digit precision just for “special warheads” has proven impractical due to the numerous technical challenges involved. Many missiles in this class still rely solely on advanced inertial navigation systems based on gyroscopes, which inevitably accumulate errors proportional to the missile’s flight distance.
Other types of long-range missiles, such as cruise missiles or tactical ballistic missiles often used in non-nuclear configurations, address these limitations with corrective systems. For instance, they may periodically receive satellite navigation signals, as seen in Iskander-M and ATACMS missiles, or use systems that compare the terrain over which the missile flies with preloaded satellite maps, a feature found in many cruise missiles. These missiles also require onboard engines capable of rapid course corrections, which generate significant g-forces.
For faster intercontinental or medium-range missiles, resolving these issues is far more complex. At hypersonic speeds, a missile’s warhead is surrounded by a plasma cloud in the dense layers of the atmosphere, severely disrupting radio signal transmission and reception. Some progress has been made in addressing this. For example, the U.S. Pershing II medium-range missile — believed by Soviet leaders to be specifically designed for high-precision “decapitation” strikes against them — reportedly achieved a CEP of 30–40 meters at atmospheric reentry speeds of 8–10 Mach. This was accomplished by augmenting its inertial system with a guidance complex that used active radar to compare real-time terrain data with a preloaded map of the area. However, to use this system, the warhead had to slow to Mach 3 during the final approach, and even this level of accuracy was insufficient for effective non-nuclear strikes.
Subsequent U.S. tests revealed the immense challenges of using GPS for hypersonic navigation and fine-tuning missile trajectories under extreme g-forces. Although these problems were deemed theoretically solvable, highly accurate strategic missiles with non-nuclear warheads, intended as part of the Prompt Global Strike program, were never developed.
There’s no evidence that Russia has succeeded in developing high-precision ballistic missiles with ranges over 1,000 kilometers. All known Russian (and Soviet-era) warheads for intercontinental and medium-range missiles have a CEP exceeding 100 meters — often significantly more.
From a military standpoint, the Oreshnik in its non-nuclear “kinetic” configuration, as described by Putin, is unlikely to be effective. However, it delivers a strong political signal. This kind of messaging has been in the works since the early 2000s, when challenges with Russia’s evolving nuclear deterrence strategy became apparent. One proposed solution involved repurposing strategic missiles for non-nuclear strikes, sending a clear warning to adversaries that a nuclear strike could follow.
Other missiles can be armed with nuclear warheads, what makes the Oreshnik different?
Many tactical ballistic missiles, such as those in the Iskander-M system, as well as air-launched ballistic and cruise missiles, can indeed be equipped with nuclear warheads. However, these are tactical nuclear payloads stored in specialized facilities and are never kept on active standby. Mounting them onto delivery systems would be noticeable to an adversary, serving as a strong — albeit risky — signal that Russia is escalating to the next level of nuclear confrontation.
Strategic missiles, by contrast — both intercontinental and medium-range — are operated by Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces and remain in constant combat readiness, able to be launched at a moment’s notice.
Proponents of the “pre-nuclear deterrence” concept argue that deploying strategic weapons to strike an adversary can demonstrate the Kremlin’s resolve and reinforce the credibility of its “red lines.”
What’s ‘pre-nuclear deterrence’?
In the late Soviet era, military and political leaders believed that the Warsaw Pact’s “conventional” forces had the upper hand over NATO in Europe. As a result, they viewed nuclear weapons as a retaliatory tool, to be used only if the U.S. launched a preemptive strike on Soviet strategic forces. However, after the collapse of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, the balance of power shifted dramatically. It became clear that without nuclear weapons, Russia would be unable to counter a hypothetical large-scale NATO attack. Therefore, the Kremlin abandoned its voluntary pledge not to use nuclear weapons first, allowing for the possibility of a first strike — but only as a last resort, if a conventional attack threatened the state’s survival.
Since then, Moscow’s nuclear doctrine has shifted again, lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. However, a significant gap remains between attacks that “threaten the state’s existence” and limited strikes intended to impose political will — or even the mere threat of such strikes. Using nuclear weapons in these scenarios, with the risk of escalating into a full-scale strategic exchange, seemed ill-advised. Naturally, potential adversaries understood this as well, giving them little reason to take “nuclear blackmail” or “red lines” seriously.
The Russian authorities have long recognized this weakness. Andrei Kokoshin, a political scientist close to the Kremlin and an expert on nuclear deterrence, addressed this issue in his 2003 book Nuclear Conflicts in the 21st Century, where he discussed the erosion of “red lines” in hypothetical future scenarios:
The challenge of [maintaining] the credibility of deterrence when lowering the “nuclear threshold,” both in relations with nuclear and non-nuclear states, […] calls for exploring additional measures to enhance the believability and effectiveness of deterrence.
Among these measures, Kokoshin highlighted the development and potential use of long-range precision weapons armed with conventional munitions, including powerful ones. He argued that a credible threat of deploying such weapons could “serve as the foundation for a ‘pre-nuclear deterrence’ system, complementing nuclear deterrence.”
“The use of such weapons should be presented politically as an act of ‘final warning’ during military operations, preceding selective use of relatively low-yield nuclear warheads,” Kokoshin wrote. “This concept must be formally integrated into Russia’s military doctrine and the operational documents of the General Staff and relevant branches of the Armed Forces.”
Did Putin’s ‘final warning’ work?
Unlikely. A significant gap remains between Russia’s current “red line” — Ukraine’s use of Western short-range operational-tactical missiles against targets in Russia — and the lowered nuclear threshold in Russia’s updated deterrence doctrine, which now refers to a “critical threat to sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Missile strikes, such as those carried out with ATACMS or Storm Shadow missiles on a Russian military headquarters in the Kursk region or a local airport, clearly don’t pose a critical threat to Russia’s sovereignty. In fact, there are likely few high-value military targets left within their range. Moreover, the capabilities of the Oreshnik missile fall far short of the formidable characteristics of a “pre-nuclear deterrence” weapon Andrei Kokoshin described.
The demonstrative use of a medium-range missile seems more like a warning for the future — particularly given Putin’s promise to strike the “countries supplying Ukraine with missiles.” It appears the Kremlin’s aim is to ensure that the incoming U.S. administration inherits a lingering fear of escalating the conflict with Russia.
Cover photo: Andrey Smirnov / AFP / Scanpix / LETA
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