Russia's Oreshnik: Why the 'hazel' missile is rattling Ukraine and NATO
Splitting into dozens of hypervelocity submunitions, the radar-evading Oreshnik gives air defences mere minutes to react, leaving Kyiv and allies deeply alarmed
On the night of May 23-24, Russian forces launched a devastating coordinated strike against military targets in Ukraine, deploying a formidable combination of Oreshnik, Iskander, Kinzhal, and Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles alongside a swarm of assault drones.
In Kyiv, authorities reported that the barrage killed four people, injured a hundred others, and caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure in Bila Tserkva—historically known during the Soviet era as Belaya Tserkov.
The massive aerial assault was an apparent retaliation for a Ukrainian strike on a college dormitory in Russia-occupied Luhansk province. According to Moscow authorities, that earlier attack killed 21 students and injured 42. Russian President Vladimir Putin had vowed retribution and called for “proposals" from his armed forces to avenge the attack.
Oreshnik: Equal to a meteorite
The Oreshnik remains unique within its weapon class, commanding global military interest and stoking deep apprehension among Western policymakers. In what was only its third operational deployment by Russia, the missile demonstrated why it is frequently compared to a nuclear weapon in terms of raw destructive power.
Capable of evading conventional radar detection, the hypersonic missile offers air defence networks a negligible response window, leaving Western and Ukrainian forces with virtually no time to execute an interception.
The first time the world became aware of the missile was in late 2024, almost 17 months before it struck Belaya Tserkov.
By deploying a missile equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) for the first time in military history, the operation marked a significant technological threshold in modern warfare, drawing comparisons to the mid-20th century arrival of strategic ballistic missile systems.
Extensive damage inflicted
A series of thunderous bolts from the sky hit the Yuzhmash military production complex at Dnipro, resulting in massive explosions. The extent of the damage caused was not revealed by Ukraine for obvious reasons, but was estimated to have been extensive. Analysts calculated that a complex—spanning roughly one square mile, with facilities built deep underground during Soviet times—was rendered largely non-functional.
Such was the impact that the usually vocal Kyiv authorities remained silent for many days even as Russia preened over what it saw as the new missile’s fearsome destructive potential.
Coming days after a fearsome strike on the energy grid of Ukraine, which crippled the war-torn country, the strike by the new missile, christened Oreshnik by Putin, had what he described as the equivalent force of a meteorite.
Rewriting war doctrine
Russia, which unleashed the attack by its its latest, and until then unknown Oreshnik missile, understandably touted its achievement.
Each of the MIRVs carries six submunitions consisting of solid metal rods. Analysts speculate they are made of dense, ultra-hard material such as tungsten, or alloys such as tungsten-titanium, or perhaps even more dense metals like osmium or rhenium, that bear down on their target, and at impact, reduce the object of their wrath to nothing.
The missile is an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) whose range would have been restricted under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the US and Russia, signed during the Soviet days, which the US withdrew from during the first Trump term. In fact, Moscow informed Washington of its intention to use the missile in advance, confirming that the missile was not carrying a nuclear warhead to prevent accidental escalation.
Mixed reactions
The Russian avenger
