In his Nov. 28 press conference following the CSTO summit in Astana, Russian President Vladimir Putin elaborated on the new Oreshnik hypersonic missile which struck a military-industrial target in Ukraine on Nov. 21. As transcribed on the President’s website, Putin again explained that the Oreshnik system has the power of a strategic nuclear warhead, but it is non-nuclear—in other words, it has raised the threshold for a nuclear conflict, although the danger certainly remains.
“Concerning strike capabilities, I have already addressed this. If we deploy multiple such systems simultaneously in a single strike—say, two, three, or four systems—it would be comparable in force to the use of nuclear weapons, albeit they are not nuclear. This is because they are: a) high-precision; b) not equipped with a nuclear explosive device, thus they do not cause environmental contamination. Yet, the force would be comparable.”
Asked about whether or not the Oreshnik strike of Nov. 21 contained any sort of warhead, Putin explained that the system was still under development, with more tests planned to determine “the balance between range and warhead.
