By Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborn
LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin's launch of an Oreshnik hypersonic missile appears aimed at intimidating Ukraine and sending a signal of Russian military might to Europe and the United States at a crucial juncture in talks to end the war.
Putin has repeatedly boasted of the speed and destructive power of the Oreshnik, which Russia first fired at Ukraine in November 2024. Since then, it has kept the weapon in reserve.
The overnight Oreshnik strike
in western Ukraine came after a week of setbacks for Russia. On Saturday, President Donald Trump sent U.S. special forces to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a close Putin ally, and on Wednesday U.S. forces seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the north Atlantic.
On Tuesday, Britain and France announced plans to deploy troops in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire - prompting Moscow to respond that it would view foreign soldiers as legitimate combat targets.
Gerhard Mangott, a Russia specialist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said Moscow was frustrated at being sidelined during weeks of diplomacy between the U.S., Ukraine and the Europeans, and "particularly mad" about the planned potential troop deployment by Kyiv's European allies. The use of the Oreshnik should be seen in that context, he said.
"It's a signal to the United States and the Europeans about the military capabilities of the Russian army," Mangott said in a telephone interview.
He said Moscow wanted to convey that "Russia is to be taken seriously, given its military arsenal, and that the Europeans and Trump should return to a minimum of respect for the Russian position in the negotiations."
'DESTRUCTION NOT NECESSARILY THE GOAL'
The Oreshnik is capable of carrying nuclear as well as conventional warheads, although there was no suggestion of any nuclear component to the latest attack.
A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters that the missile struck a state enterprise in the western city of Lviv and was likely carrying inert or "dummy" warheads - as in 2024, when Russia first fired it to test the weapon in war.
"It does appear that at this point Russia is using Oreshnik for signaling purposes, so the destruction is not necessarily the goal," Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, told Reuters when asked if the use of dummy warheads would diminish the capacity of Moscow's action to intimidate Ukraine and its allies.
"It's probably a general signal of resolve to escalate. My guess is that it will be read this way by the West," he said.
Western reaction to the attack, around 60 km (40 miles) from Ukraine's border with NATO member Poland, was swift. The leaders of Britain, France and Germany called it "escalatory and unacceptable". European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said it was "a clear escalation against Ukraine and meant as a warning to Europe and to the U.S.".
RUSSIAN STATEMENT ON REASON FOR MISSILE USE DRAWS SCEPTICISM
Russia specialist Mangott was sceptical about the official statement from Russia's Defence Ministry that the Oreshnik launch was in response to an alleged Ukraine drone strike targeting one of Putin's residences, in the northern region of Novgorod, late last month. Ukraine has denied any such attack took place, accusing Moscow of lying about it in order to derail peace talks.
Several high-profile Russian war bloggers also criticised the official framing of the strike as a revenge attack. One, Yuri Baranchik, suggested it would have "looked more convincing" if Moscow had fired the missile at President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's bunker in Kyiv.
Mick Ryan, an Australian military expert, linked the weapon's use to Russia's recent setbacks, especially over Venezuela.
He said the point was "to demonstrate that Russia remains a nuclear-armed world power. In this guise, it is a psychological weapon – an instrument of Putin’s cognitive war against Ukraine and the West – rather than a weapon of mass physical destruction."
Russian arch-hawk Dmitry Medvedev, a former president who is now deputy chairman of Putin's Security Council, alluded in a social media post to the capture of Maduro, the oil tanker seizure by the U.S. and the possibility of further U.S. sanctions against Russia, which he said had made for a "stormy" start to the year.
In comments highly critical of Washington, he said international relations had descended into a madhouse and compared the Oreshnik strike to "a life-saving injection of haloperidol", an anti-psychotic drug.
Prominent Russian war blogger Fighterbomber, a former military serviceman, said he thought the use of the Oreshnik was a display of power to convey a message and that Moscow would not be resorting to it often.
He noted that some Oreshnik systems had been transferred to Belarus and that Russia would have some of its own in reserve, but suggested that there was not an endless supply of the relatively new missile.
"Taking all these constants into account, we can assume that we can afford to conduct such demonstrations two or three times a year," he wrote.
He expressed hope that no further launches would be needed for now, concluding: "The signals have been sent and they have been heard."
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborn in LondonEditing by Frances Kerry)
