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Russia’s Deadly New Missile Makes Nuclear Weapons Redundant, Putin Says.
The intermediate-range ballistic Oreshnik missile that Vladimir Putin has recently boasted about may remove the need to use nuclear weapons, the Russian president has said.
“What we need now is not to improve the nuclear doctrine, but the ‘Oreshnik,’ because enough of these modern weapons systems puts us on the verge of virtually eliminating the need to employ nuclear weapons,” he said on Tuesday, according to a Kremlin transcript.
Putin was referring to the nuclear-capable Oreshnik (“the hazel”) that Russia launched on the Ukrainian city Dnipro on November 21. Based on the RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile. It reportedly carried six conventional warheads and has a range of up to 3,100 miles.
Putin has boasted about its speed which at 10 times the speed of sound, or Mach 10 would make it immune to any missile defense system. He has also said the weapon is so powerful that even missiles which are fitted with conventional warheads could be as devastating as a nuclear strike and can destroy underground bunkers.
Its use on Dnipro raised the alarm over Moscow’s atomic weapons intentions because it coincided with Putin formalizing Russia’s nuclear doctrine which lowers the threshold for the use of unconventional weapons.
It also came days after the Biden administration angered Moscow by permitting Ukraine to use longer-range ATACMS inside Russian territory.
Putin made the comments during a meeting of Russia’s civil society and human rights council in response to a question by Marina Akhmedova, editor-in-chief of the REGNUM information agency who told the president how people in Kursk are dealing with Ukraine’s incursion into the Russian region.
Repeating Kremlin talking points about the war it started, such as Russia being surrounded by international threats, Akhmedova told Putin, “when you confront aggressive countries or tighten the nuclear doctrine, of course, it is a little scary,” before adding, “but we support you.”
The Russian leader replied, “we are not tightening the nuclear doctrine, we are improving it,” adding “therefore, we are behaving quite carefully in all directions, I would even say, with restraint.”
Akhmedova has previously commented on Russia’s nuclear weapons capability, telling state media last month that Ukraine would only have the West to blame if Moscow launched a nuclear strike.
“If NATO ballistic missiles fly from Ukraine to Russia, Ukraine will be the first to be wiped out,” she said after Putin had issued the decree for the new nuclear doctrine.
The new doctrine now refers to “a critical threat” to “sovereignty” as well as the “territorial integrity” to both Russia and Belarus, whose leader Alexander Lukashenko is Putin’s closest ally. Last week, Lukashenko asked Putin to deploy the Oreshnik on the territory of Belarus and said that there are at least 30 potential sites for it in the country.
Belarusian opposition Franak Viačorka, senior adviser to opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya toldNewsweek, “the planned deployment of Oreshniks is a reckless move to provoke the West, and to escalate the situation, though militarily it doesn’t make a big change,” adding “this is yet another betrayal of Belarusian independence.”
(Miami herald)