Observers cast doubt on Oreshnik missile's supposed greatness

By Galina Korol | 2024-12-20

KYIV -- Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to brandish the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile to intimidate Ukraine and the West, but analysts say that the missile's capabilities appear to be greatly exaggerated.

Russian propaganda often calls new Russian weapons unprecedented, and the Oreshnik missile system is no exception.

Even Kirill, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, amplified the Kremlin's message in November when he thanked the government and scientists for "creating an incredible weapon."

However, only the image put forth by the Kremlin is great in this case, observers told Kontur.

In the real world, when Russian arms have gone up against Western arms, the former for the most part have been roundly defeated.

Israel, which relies on US and domestic weaponry, retaliated against Iran in October. Iran's domestic and Russian-made air defenses failed miserably in that confrontation -- reportedly, three Russian S-300 systems were destroyed.

Russian air defense systems proved similarly problematic when Ukrainian missiles destroyed at least nine Russian fighter jets at Saki air base in occupied Crimea in 2022.

In 2020, forces operating Turkish and Israeli drones decimated Russian-equipped foes in Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan), Syria and Libya.

"Propaganda is one of the active tools that Russia uses against Ukraine and any state," Anatoliy Khrapchinskiy, a former Ukrainian air force officer and the deputy director of an electronic warfare equipment manufacturer, told Global Watch.

Investigators have examined the wreckage of the Oreshnik missile that Russia fired into Dnipro, Ukraine, in November. Nobody was killed in the strike, which inflicted minor damage on a weapon factory.

Ukrainians are not expecting a barrage of Oreshniks anytime soon, after viewing the pieces.

"The majority of those who examined these components and fragments of this missile and had the opportunity to touch them, and those who were able to analyze a few photos that were taken at the site of the investigation, confirm that this is most likely a missile that was put together from Soviet missiles," Khrapchinskiy said.

"As for the capability of producing these missiles, I'm more confident saying that they made one, or at most two, of these missiles from the ones they had," he added.

Underwhelming impact

The world saw the Oreshnik in action for the first time on November 21, and it largely had an underwhelming impact in Ukraine.

Oleksii Izhak, a scholar at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and resident of Dnipro, remembers that morning vividly.

"I'm already used to it; I don't wake up every time the air raid siren goes off. But this time there was a new sound I hadn't heard before," Izhak told Global Watch.

"I got up and went into the hallway, where there are two walls, to shelter for a while because it sounded unfamiliar, across the whole city. You couldn't tell where it was or what it was."

"But all that really happened was debris fell and roofs were damaged slightly. The whole point was to produce ... sound and light effects, so [Russia] launched the missile while the city was asleep and quiet," he said.