The Oreshnik missile launched by the Russian military at the Ukrainian city of Dnepr on November 21 is not the newest weapon that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to present it as. An examination of the debris showed that some parts were manufactured more than seven years ago. According to sources of the Ukrainian portal Defense Express, the Oreshnik could have been assembled in 2017-2018 on the basis of the Yars intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and since then it has been lying in storage.

A serial number and production date of April 12, 2017 were found on one of the Oreshnik parts. It was this year that Russia was going to begin deploying the RS-26 Rubezh strategic missile system, which was a further development of the RS-24 Yars project. But in March 2018, the Ministry of Defense abandoned plans to introduce the R-26 into its arsenal and excluded it from the state armament program until 2027, focusing on the hypersonic RK Avangard.

Experts believe that the development of the Oreshnik began more than 7 years ago, at least in the 2010s, because 2017 is the year of production of a specific part that was to be used for the finished project. Defense Express also draws attention to the fact that the found part has the index "EFIT 302811.002". Analysts associate this marking with the Scientific and Production Center for Automation and Instrument Making named after Academician Pilyugin (NPTsAP), which is part of Roscosmos and supplies control systems for the Zenit, Proton-M rockets and Fregat upper stages. This suggests that the NPCAP also equips the Oreshnik, which is assembled from Yars ICBM components.

A former rocket engineer and employee of the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, Alexander Kochetkov, previously said that the Oreshnik cannot be considered an advanced development. According to him, the system is a shortened version of the Yars with a larger number of warheads. “The combat effectiveness of the Oreshnik without nuclear equipment is extremely questionable - it’s like delivering pizza in a dump truck. The accuracy will be plus or minus 100 meters, or even worse, and each warhead can carry about 100 kg of conventional explosives - the same as the Russian Tornado multiple launch rocket system, which the aggressor has been using since the beginning of the invasion,” Kochetkov emphasized.

The Pentagon concluded that the Oreshnik is a modified version of the RS-26 Rubezh, which was tested back in 2011. The UK Ministry of Defence also considers the Oreshnik to be a variant of this ICBM, noting that Russia has a limited stock of such missiles. The technical characteristics of the Oreshnik remain unknown. However, if we assume that its design is identical to the RS-26, then the launch weight of the missile could reach 40-50 tons, and the flight range could be 6,000 km. Putin, talking about the launch of the Oreshnik on the Dnieper, claimed that these were tests of a new medium-range ballistic missile system. According to him, the strike hit a “defence-industrial complex facility” in Ukraine – the Yuzhmash plant, which produces missiles and other weapons, was involved.

Putin noted that the Oreshnik is not a strategic weapon or an ICBM, but there is allegedly no countermeasure to this system in the world, since it attacks targets at a speed of 10 Mach, that is, 2.5-3 kilometers per second. However, this missile did not cause significant damage to Yuzhmash, as evidenced by satellite images analyzed by z-channels. According to sources of The Moscow Times (TMT), the use of the allegedly new Oreshnik missile was a special propaganda operation to intimidate Western politicians and citizens, invented after the United States and its NATO allies allowed the Ukrainian Armed Forces to fire ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles at Russia.

Kremlin PR people took part in this operation. First, the strike itself was carried out, the video recordings of which were distributed on social networks and foreign media. Then, during a briefing, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova received a call from the curator of the media in the Kremlin, Alexei Gromov, who demanded that she not comment on the attack. The culmination was Putin's speech at the CSTO summit. At the same time, TMT's interlocutors noted that Russia does not have significant reserves of Oreshnik, and it will take years to reach mass production of these missiles.