TASS-FACTBOX. On December 17, 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced at a meeting of the Defense Ministry that the medium-range missile system armed with the Oreshnik hypersonic missile will be placed on combat duty by the end of 2025. TASS-FACTBOX editors have prepared a report on this type of weapon.
Oreshnik is a Russian road-mobile missile system with a medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile.
On November 21, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia had used the latest Russian medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, for the first time, striking a Ukrainian defense industry facility - the Yuzhmash plant in Dnepropetrovsk. According to the head of state, the combat testing of the Oreshnik missile system was conducted in response to an attack by US-made and British-made long-range missiles on Russian territory.
The following day, at a meeting with the Defense Ministry leadership, defense industry representatives, and missile system developers, Putin announced that, according to live monitoring data analysis, the combat testing of the latest missile system was successful, the decision to mass-produce it had been made and "practically organized" - it will be deployed to the Strategic Missile Forces (SMF). However, according to the president, Oreshnik is not a strategic weapon, but rather a precision-guided munition. However, due to its striking power when used in large numbers or in groups, as well as in combination with other Russian high-precision long-range systems, the effect of its strikes will be comparable to that of strategic weapons. The president also said that the Oreshnik is not a modernization of older Soviet systems, but a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art system. According to SMF Commander Colonel General Sergey Karakayev, the development of the medium-range mobile ground-launched missile system as part of the Oreshnik experimental design project began in July 2023.
