The new missile’s demonstration was a success, the Russian president has said

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated the Defense Ministry and the military industry on developing and deploying the new Oreshnik mid-range missile.

“The Oreshnik test was a success, I congratulate you,” the president said on Friday, at a meeting with Defense Ministry officials and military industry leaders.

“The tests will continue, including in combat conditions, depending on the type of threats to our security,” Putin added. “Especially since we have enough of these weapons.”

Putin revealed the existence of the hypersonic medium-range ballistic system on Thursday, following a strike on a Ukrainian military-industrial complex in Dnepropetrovsk. He explained that this was Moscow’s response to Kiev’s use of US and UK missiles against Russia’s Bryansk and Kursk Regions, which have turned the Russia-Ukraine confrontation global.

According to Putin, the Oreshnik is a not a modernization of a Soviet design but an entirely new system, built in post-USSR Russia. 

“As you know, no one in the world has such a weapon yet,” Putin said during the meeting at the Kremlin. “Yes, sooner or later it will appear in other leading countries, we know what developments are being carried out there. But this will be tomorrow, or in a year or two. And we have this system today. This is important.”

Russia will continue to refine and develop the Oreshnik, Putin said, noting that “there are no means of counteracting, intercepting such a missile, in the world today. They do not exist.”

While the new missile is not strictly speaking a “strategic” weapon or a means of mass destruction, its precision and striking power is “comparable in power and effect,” so it will enter service in the Strategic Missile Forces, Putin revealed.

Source: RT