Analysis-Putin warns Ukraine and West of unused weapons from 2024

By Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborne

LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin’s launch of the Oreshnik hypersonic missile appears aimed at scaring Ukraine and sending a signal of Russian military power 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 over 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 ally of Putin, 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 to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire – prompting Moscow to respond that it would view foreign soldiers as legitimate combat targets.

Gerhard Mangot, a Russia expert at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said Moscow was frustrated by weeks of diplomacy between the US, Ukraine and the Europeans and was “particularly paranoid” about a possible military deployment planned by Kiev’s European allies. The use of Oreshnik should be seen in that context, he said.

“This is a signal to the United States and Europeans about the military capabilities of the Russian military,” Mangot said in a telephone interview.

He said that Moscow wanted to send a message that “Russia should be taken seriously by giving away its military weapons, and that the Europeans and Trump should return to a minimum respect for the Russian position in the negotiations.”

‘Destruction is not necessarily the goal’

The Oreshnik is capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional warheads, although there was no suggestion of a nuclear component in the latest attack.

A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters that the missile had hit a state enterprise in the western city of Lviv and was likely carrying inactive or “dummy” warheads – as in 2024, when Russia first fired it to test the weapon in battle.

“It seems that at this point Russia is using the Oreshnik for signaling purposes, so destruction is not the goal,” Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian nuclear force project, told Reuters, adding that the use of the dummy warhead would reduce Moscow’s ability to act to intimidate Ukraine and its allies.

“It’s probably a general sign of resolve to escalate. I guess that’s how the West will read it,” he said.

Western reaction to the attack, which is about 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Ukraine’s border with NATO member Poland, was swift. The leaders of Britain, France and Germany called it “escalating and unacceptable”. “This is a clear escalation against Ukraine and a warning to Europe and the US,” said Caja Callas, the EU’s foreign policy chief.

The Russian statement on the reason for the missile launch drew skepticism

Russian expert Mangot doubted Russia’s defense ministry’s official statement that the Oreshnik launch was in response to Ukraine’s drone strike targeting one of Putin’s residences in the northern region of Novgorod late last month. Ukraine has denied any such attack and accused Moscow of lying to derail peace talks.

Several high-profile Russian war bloggers also criticized the official framing of the strike as a revenge attack. One, Yuriy Baranchik, suggested that it would “look even more convincing” if Moscow had fired a missile at President Volodymyr Zelensky’s bunker in Kiev.

Mick Ryan, an Australian military expert, linked the use of the weapon to Russia’s recent failures, particularly in Venezuela.

He said “Russia is a nuclear weapon to show that it has become a world power. In this guise, it is a psychological weapon – a tool 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 Putin’s vice-chairman of the Security Council, hinted at Maduro’s capture, the US seizure of oil tankers and the possibility of more US sanctions against Russia in a social media post, which he said made for a “storm” of the year.

In comments highly critical of Washington, he said international relations had descended into madness 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 show of force to convey a message and that Moscow would not resort to it very often.

He noted that some Oreshnik systems had been transferred to Belarus and that Russia would have some in its own reserves, but suggested that there was not an endless supply of relatively new missiles.

“Given all these constants, we can assume that we can conduct such demonstrations two or three times a year,” he wrote.

He expressed hope that no further launch would be needed for now, concluding: “Signals have been sent and they have been heard.”

(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Andrew Osborne in London Editing by Frances Carey)