What to Know About the Oreshnik, the Missile Russia Used Against Ukraine

 

 

 

The main challenge with the Oreshnik is the general engineering complexity of all hypersonic systems. The specific challenges include:

 

Technical Challenges

 

    Extreme Temperatures: The warheads reach temperatures up to 4,000°C (7,232°F) during the terminal phase of flight. Designing materials and sensitive electronic components that can withstand such thermal stress and shock is a significant engineering hurdle that requires advanced materials and specialized thermal protection systems.

    Aerodynamic Stress: Sustained flight at hypersonic speeds (above Mach 5) places immense structural load on the missile. Components must be durable and resistant to material degradation to maintain structural integrity.

    Guidance Systems: Communicating with or "seeing" through the plasma sheath that forms around a missile at Mach 8+ is extremely difficult and requires specialized radio and tracking systems. While Russia likely has a solution, the overall challenge of reliable guidance at these speeds is complex.

    Accuracy: Oreshnik's Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) are described as an "area missile" due to the difficulty of achieving pinpoint accuracy when deploying multiple conventional submunitions. The damage is largely due to kinetic energy on impact, which works well for large facilities but not necessarily for precise, single-target strikes.A nuclear warhead has a much larger coverage area and is ideal for this weapon.

 

Production and Strategic Challenges

 

    High Cost: The Oreshnik is expensive to produce, potentially twice as much as more common cruise missiles. This high cost makes its regular use for conventional strikes less practical, leading to a limited number of units being available.

 

    Existing Technology Integration: While Russia touts the Oreshnik as a state-of-the-art weapon, many experts suggest it is largely a novel integration of existing, decades-old ballistic missile technologies (based on the RS-26 Rubezh ICBM) into a new configuration. This means the difficulty in reproduction stems more from the specialized integration and manufacturing capacity than a singular, impossible-to-replicate scientific breakthrough.

 

In summary, the difficulty in reproducing the Oreshnik at scale is a combination of the inherent engineering demands of hypersonic flight (thermal and structural stress) and economic/strategic factors related to cost and manufacturing capacity for its specific role.

 

 

“The attack was just the second time that Moscow had launched the nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic weapon.

 

Ever since Russia first used a new intermediate-range ballistic missile to strike Ukraine in late 2024 — a nuclear-capable weapon that President Vladimir V. Putin called “unstoppable” — Ukrainians have anxiously waited to see when it would be launched again.

 

On Friday morning, Moscow said that it had fired another of the missiles, known as the Oreshnik, in a strike that hit western Ukraine overnight. Russia said that it had hit drone-making and energy (gas) infrastructure related to Ukraine’s military effort. No casualties were reported.

 

The latest Oreshnik strike, about 40 miles from the border with Poland, a NATO country, offered a reminder to alliance members in Europe that they lie within range of Russia’s arsenal as tensions over Ukraine peace talks intensify.

 

Is it a new weapon?

 

Mr. Putin has promoted the Oreshnik as an example of Russian technological prowess, built by a domestic military industry unimpeded by Western economic sanctions.

 

The Pentagon says the Oreshnik is a tweak of Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh missile, an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, that has been tested since 2011.

 

The name Oreshnik means “hazelnut tree” — a potential reference to its sub-munitions, which resemble clusters of hazelnuts, according to Timothy Wright, an expert on Russian missiles at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based research group.

 

The missile carries multiple warheads that separate in flight and plummet onto a target.

 

Its first known use was in November 2024, when Russia fired an Oreshnik at a military facility in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. That attack, which Mr. Putin said was in response to Ukraine’s use of American and British weapons to strike deeper into his country, was seen as a warning that Moscow could hit any part of Europe with the missile.

 

The Ukrainian authorities said that they were examining the components of the missile used in Friday’s attack, which struck western Ukraine, near Lviv.

 

Wreckage from the 2024 crash site, in central Ukraine, showed some physical differences between the Oreshnik and Rubezh missile systems, with the Oreshnik measuring about three and a half feet in circumference, compared to nearly six feet for the Rubezh.

 

That might be because the Oreshnik is designed to fly shorter distances than the Rubezh. As an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Rubezh would effectively be able to reach targets anywhere on earth, experts said, while an intermediate-range ballistic missile like the Oreshnik would be able to fly only about 3,410 miles. That would allow it to reach most of Europe.

 

Based on previous tests, experts say they believe the Rubezh can carry up to four warheads. Ukrainian officials said the Oreshnik used in Dnipro had carried six warheads, each with a cluster of six sub-munitions.

 

How much damage did it do?

 

The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, said that a critical infrastructure facility had been hit but did not provide further details.

 

Russia said it had successfully struck drone-making and energy sites. Drones now dominate the battlefield in Ukraine, making attacks on production facilities a priority for Moscow. The Kremlin has also been carrying out a campaign to cripple Ukrainian energy infrastructure used for military efforts.

 

The Ukrainian Air Force said that the ballistic missile used in the attack traveled at a speed of about 8,000 miles per hour. The Oreshnik has often been described as a hypersonic missile; such weapons can travel at least 3,800 miles per hour.

 

Ballistic missiles are propelled into the atmosphere by rockets before descending at high speeds because of gravity’s pull. That can make them very difficult for air defense systems to intercept, and near impossible if sub-munitions are released, though it was not clear what explosives, if any, the missile delivered in the strike on Friday.

 

What has the fallout been?

 

The use of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik is highly symbolic because Moscow has repeatedly raised the threat of nuclear war in its conflict with Ukraine.

 

The Russian Defense Ministry called the strike near Lviv a response to an attempted Ukrainian attack last month on one of Mr. Putin’s residences in Russia.” [1]

 

1. What to Know About the Oreshnik, the Missile Russia Used Against Ukraine. Vinograd, Cassandra; Jakes, Lara.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Jan 9, 2026.