What Putin’s nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile means for Nato security

By Robyn Dixon

After Russia’s launch last week of its Oreshnik intermediate-range missile, state-owned propaganda outlet RT aired a video graphic depicting the missile’s flight times to major European capitals: 20 minutes to London and Paris, 15 minutes to Berlin and 12 minutes to Warsaw.

In his most aggressive nuclear signalling since invading Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly extolled the missile in public statements, claiming that Nato has no way to intercept it and warning that Moscow could use it against Kyiv’s “decision-making centres.” The missile is nuclear-capable, but for now, Putin says, it will be armed with multiple conventional warheads.

“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” Putin warned in a November 21 address, announcing the Oreshnik strike on an aerospace manufacturer in Dnipro, Ukraine.

Western leaders and analysts dismissed Putin’s rhetoric as more Russian sabrerattling, after yet another of Moscow’s red lines was crossed when President Joe Biden allowed Kyiv to use the US-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, to strike targets inside Russia.

But Putin’s threat, clearly directed at Europe, comes at a critical moment, with the United States in political transition and Europe in trepidation of President-elect Donald Trump’s admiration for the Russian leader and the extent to which he could scale back Washington’s commitment to Nato. Meanwhile, Russia is steadily gaining ground in eastern Ukraine, intensifying pressure on Kyiv’s forces as Putin rules out any compromise to end the war.

POWERFUL SIGNAL

Moscow’s use of an intermediate-range ballistic missile sends its own powerful signal about Putin’s determination to prevail in Ukraine, as he seeks to weaken Nato, split Europe from the United States, deter European support for Ukraine and bend Europe’s security architecture to Russia’s will.

The Oreshnik — meaning “hazelnut tree” — poses a direct and potentially devastating threat to Europe, even if conventionally armed, according to analysts.

It marks what some Western arms experts see as the opening shot in a new European arms race that could last for decades and consume billions of dollars in Nato countries and Russia, with Moscow already ploughing about 40 percent of its budget into military and security forces.

In a move foreshadowed months ago but timed to express displeasure over Ukraine’s use of ATACMS and French-British Storm Shadow missiles against Russia, Putin last week also formally lowered Russia’s threshold for using nuclear weapons.

This deepens the ambiguity about when Russia could use nuclear weapons, as Putin seeks to foster uncertainty and amplify European security fears ahead of Trump’s inauguration.

Russia’s previous nuclear doctrine stated that it could use nuclear weapons against a conventional attack that threatened its very existence. That wording was replaced by a reference to attacks that posed a “critical threat” to Russian or Belarusian sovereignty or territorial integrity, as well as a provision that Moscow could launch a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear power — such as Ukraine — that is using the weapons of a nuclear power — such as the United States.

NUCLEAR THREAT

The Pentagon as well as Western arms-control experts believe that the Oreshnik is not new — they say it is probably based on the RS-26 Rubezh missile, which was tested several times more than a decade ago, publicly shelved in 2018 and recently pulled out and modified. Putin ordered mass production of the Oreshnik and said many similar systems were being developed.

At a Nov 22 meeting between Putin and top military and security chiefs, Sergei Karakayev, commander of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said that the Oreshnik “can hit targets throughout Europe” and that a massed attack “would be comparable to the use of nuclear weapons.”

Decker Eveleth, an analyst at the CNA security think tank, based in Arlington, Virginia, said that Russia could destroy air bases and military targets across a wide area of Europe with just a few conventionally armed Oreshniks, and that the weapon’s nuclear capability carries a striking nuclear threat.

“Oreshnik probably has the capability to carry six nuclear warheads into Europe in about 15 to 20 minutes, and due to the speed and trajectory the missile would fly on, it would be extremely difficult to intercept,” he said.

At the meeting with security chiefs, Putin smiled as he praised the missile, boasting that no one else in the world has such a weapon and promising state awards to the developers. His message was clear: Russia has a significant advantage over Europe in missile strike capabilities, at a time when Trump’s future support for Nato is in doubt.

“The desired effect was certainly achieved: panic, disagreements, calls for negotiations and peace,” said hawkish state television anchor Vladimir Solovyov, gloating that Russia could strike “those Nato bases that are supplying the weapons which the Americans are launching from the territory of Ukraine targeting Russian territory — in Poland, Romania, Britain or wherever else.”

RT Editor in Chief Margarita Simonyan said on the same programme that Russia needs to terrify Europe with the real impact of war. “Until they see the fist flying toward their snout, they will not stop,” she said.

NEW MISSILE AGE

Alexander Graef, senior researcher at the Hamburg-based Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy, believes that Europe is at the threshold of “a new missile age.” In July, the United States and Germany announced plans to rotate intermediate-range US missiles into Germany starting in 2026 — prompting a sharp response from Moscow — while several nations have joined a French-led project, the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA), to develop a long-range missile.

“We are in an arms race, and it’s going to develop over the next 20 years,” Graef said. “And so what I think is going to happen is that these different parties — Russia, states in Europe, the United States — are growing their arsenals because they don’t have the numbers yet to use these weapons effectively and to destroy the many targets that are possibly there.”

But some doubt Nato’s will to deter Russia, as Moscow seeks to exploit the divisions between states, courting Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who has taken a staunchly pro-Kremlin stance.

Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat and an expert on arms control and global security, said Nato leaders had repeatedly faltered in the face of Putin’s nuclear threats, which had succeeded in deterring timely Western military deliveries to Kyiv, allowing Putin to avoid defeat.

“I don’t think that the plans in Moscow are really to make a nuclear war. The weapon remains fear. It’s first of all psychological warfare, and I think it is quite successful. This propaganda works,” he said. “It’s essentially just a misunderstanding of how to deal with Vladimir Putin.”

‘DIVIDE THE WOLRD’

Putin, Bondarev continued, would make no deal with Trump to end the Ukraine war unless it gave him a victory over Kyiv, shutting Ukraine out of Nato and leaving occupied Ukrainian territory in Russian hands. That would pave the way for the Russian leader to confront Europe in the future, potentially even invading one of the Baltic nations.

“He doesn’t want to divide Ukraine. He wants to divide the world. He wants his own sphere of influence where no one, including the United States, can get into without his permission. I don’t know why Americans do not see it, because if they make a deal with Putin, they will hand him this victory.”

The Oreshnik would have been barred under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) between the United States and the Soviet Union, which banned missiles with ranges of 310 to 3,400 miles. Trump withdrew the United States from the treaty in 2019 after long-running US accusations of Russian violations.

“We had a treaty that prohibited this kind of missile, and that was for good reason. It was because they were deemed very destabilizing,” said François Diaz-Maurin, associate editor for nuclear affairs at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, referring to the missile’s speed, its multiple independently targeted warheads and the potential for a catastrophic misunderstanding created by its dual conventional and nuclear capabilities.

“Once launched, this missile gets to European capitals within 12 to 16 minutes. It’s very little time to be able to react, to detect it. And then added to that is a possibility that it could have a nuclear warhead inside of several of them. It gives very little time to know what’s coming at you.”

Even as Europe awakens to the need to protect itself and deter Russia, it cannot yet match Putin, who has geared the bulk of Russia’s economy to war and weapons production, he said.

“This new missile is actually a confirmation why Europe should actually take the lead on its own security,” Diaz-Maurin said.

- THE WASHINGTON POST