Vladimir Putin‘s new Oreshnik ‘super-weapon’ is a propaganda invention to scare the West and is at least five years from production, Russian officials have reportedly admitted.
Russia fired the nuclear-capable hypersonic missile at Dnipro in Ukraine on November 21 in what was described as a combat test.
Footage of the attack caused alarm around the world, although it resulted in almost no damage on the Ukrainian defence plant it targeted because the Putin missile was not fitted with live warheads.
The Moscow Times now reports that four Russian officials say the Oreshnik threat to Ukraine and the West was an ‘orchestrated show’ by the Putin regime – and that the weapon’s imminent use to unleash major damage is almost impossible.
‘There were brainstorming sessions on how to respond and how to put the Americans and the British in their place for allowing Zelensky to use long-range weapons [against Putin territory],’ said one Russian source, according to the report.
‘And how to scare Berlin and other Europeans so that they don’t do it again.’
A defence ministry source also admitted that Russia ‘most likely does not have any real reserves of the Oreshnik systems’.
‘Given the bureaucracy and backwardness, the industry will need 5-7 years to set up their production,’ they added.
The moment Russia used the Oreshnik for the first time to strike Dnipro, on November 21
Vladimir Putin’s (pictured) new Oreshnik ‘super-weapon’ is a propaganda invention to scare the West and is at least five years from production, Russian officials have reportedly admitted
Pictured above is Putin’s Oreshnik hypersonic missile hitting a defence plant in Dnipro, Ukraine, on November 21
The report said ‘a classic military propaganda campaign was designed to instill exaggerated ideas about the Russian military-industrial complex’.
Another Russian official told the newspaper: ‘There were several [episodes] in this show that were staged and presented to the public.
‘The main ones were the actual strike with the Oreshnik missile, [and] the dissemination of footage on social networks and in foreign media.’
Initially, when the missile fired there were fears that it was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile [ICBM].
The report claims that a moment when senior Russian foreign ministry officials was called on her mobile midway through a press conference to be told not to comment on the ICBM claim was all part of the propaganda operation to hype the Oreshnik.
‘The actors in the show included Foreign Ministry press secretary Maria Zakharova and Kremlin media curator Alexei Gromov,’ said the report.
‘The latter called Zakharova right during the briefing and forbade her over the speakerphone ‘to comment on the ballistic missile strike’ on Dnipro.’
One of the Russian officials told the news outlet: ‘Some participants in the brainstorming sessions were especially proud of this trick with the alleged call from Gromov.’
This is the distances the hypersonic missile could reportedly reach
A grab taken from handout footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry on March 1, 2024 purport to show the test firing of an ICBM belonging to the country’s nuclear deterrence forces
Putin then weighed in by threatening Ukraine and the West with use of the weapons multiple warheads if the US and Britain continued to permit their ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles to be fired by Ukraine onto Russian territory.
Earlier the Kremlin dictator and his propagandists had bluntly threatened to use nuclear weapons – but there was a feeling their bluff had been called and they needed a new non-nuclear threat with which to terrify Ukraine and the West.
He likened a non-nuclear Oreshnik to a ‘meteorite’, saying the temperature of the blast zone would be almost as great as the surface of the sun.
‘These are quite powerful elements that are heated up to a temperature of 4,000 degrees centigrade,’ he said.
‘A kinetic impact, a massive impact. Like a meteorite falling. We know in history how and what meteorites fell where and what the consequences were. It was enough to form whole lakes, wasn’t it?’
‘The apparently secret development of the Oreshnik was hyped because the Kremlin’s nuclear threats ‘are no longer as effective as they once were, with experts and Western leaders alike calling to ignore them’, said The Moscow Times.
‘This is why Kremlin spin doctors recommended launching a massive PR campaign around the Oreshnik.
A view shows a site of a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Dnipro
Russia on November 21 fired an experimental missile at Ukraine, officials from Western governments said. Ukraine initially accused Russia of firing in an attack on Dnipro an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in combat for the first time in history
Fragments of a rocket which struck Dnipro on November 21 are seen at a center for forensic analysis in an undisclosed location in Ukraine, November 24
‘However, Russia lacks a substantial stockpile of Oreshnik systems, and Putin himself admitted that the strike on Dnipro was a test.
‘Realistically, it would take years to mass-produce the Oreshnik given the bureaucratic inefficiencies and lagging innovation that plague Russia’s defence sector.’
Pavel Aksyonov, a military analyst at BBC Russia, said: ‘Putin waved the nuclear stick around for too long. He needed something new. So [he brought out] the Oreshnik.
‘It hasn’t destroyed anything, it won’t be available for the army anytime soon, but everyone is afraid.’
