Jan 9 (Reuters) – The Russian military said on Friday that it had fired its hypersonic Oreshnik missile at a target in Ukraine as part of what it said was a massive overnight strike on energy facilities and drone manufacturing sites there.
The Defence Ministry said in a statement that the strike was a response to an attempted Ukrainian drone attack on one of President Vladimir Putin’s residences at the end of December.
Kyiv has called the Russian assertion that it tried to attack the residence, in Russia’s Novgorod’s region, “a lie.”
The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region had earlier said that a Russian attack had struck an infrastructure target, which unverified social media reports said was a massive underground gas storage facility.
Reuters could not verify that.
Ukrainian media had quoted the Ukrainian Air Force as saying that a ballistic missile had been used in the strike which had been travelling at a speed of nearly 13,000 km per hour (8,000 mph).
Moscow first fired an Oreshnik – Russian for hazel tree – against what it said was a military factory in Ukraine in November 2024. On that occasion Ukrainian sources said the missile was carrying dummy warheads, not explosives, and caused limited damage.
Putin has said that the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile is impossible to intercept because of speeds reportedly more than 10 times the speed of sound and that its destructive power is comparable to that of a nuclear weapon, even when fitted with a conventional warhead.
Some Western officials have expressed scepticism about the Oreshnik’s capabilities. One U.S. official said in December 2024 that the weapon was not seen as a game-changer on the battlefield.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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