The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that on the night of January 9 a massive strike was carried out on critical facilities in Ukraine, including with the use of the Oreshnik. The strike was delivered by the Russian Armed Forces in response to Kiev’s attack on the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The statement by the Russian Defense Ministry reads, “A massive strike was delivered with long-range high-precision weapons of ground- and sea-based deployment, including the mobile medium-range ground-based missile system Oreshnik, as well as strike unmanned aerial vehicles, against critically important facilities on the territory of Ukraine.”
The Russian Defense Ministry did not specify where exactly and what precisely the Oreshnik hit, but emphasized that all designated targets were successfully struck.
According to Ukrainian media reports, the target of the attack in Lvov Region may have been the Stry gas field as well as an underground gas storage facility. As reported by Strana ua, the sky over Lvov Region turned red following a possible strike by the Russian ballistic missile Oreshnik.
Ukrainian media published impressive footage of a pink-red glow over Lvov and reported an almost complete disappearance of gas in a number of areas after the explosion. According to Lvov Mayor Andrey Sadovy, the Bilche-Volitsko-Ugersky underground gas hub was hit. It was the country’s largest storage facility.
Experts noted that striking such a facility would require either a powerful seismic impact or the use of a nuclear charge with a yield of more than 100 kilotons.
Be that as it may, the intensity of the explosions was exceptionally high, and their impact was felt even beyond the region, in neighboring areas of Ukraine. By a number of indicators, such as the scale of destruction and the missile’s flight speed, this attack is characteristic of strikes carried out by the Oreshnik system. In particular, the Air Command “West” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that the missile’s speed reached 13,000 km/h.
It is noteworthy that on the morning of January 8, the US Embassy in Ukraine published a warning about a potentially serious strike that could occur within the next few days. A similar warning was published on November 20, 2024, on the eve of the first launch of the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, which took place on November 21.
Ukrainian online communities have published a large number of photographs of what was happening in the sky over Lvov.
“The flash like lightning is a plasma cocoon forming around the hypersonic glide vehicle of the IRBM ‘Rubezh,’ R-26, what we have come to call the ‘Oreshnik.’ As for why it has no explosives — Ukrainians are worried about that — we explain. At speeds above 5–6 Mach, the energy reserve in a piece of metal is greater than the energy reserve of explosives that can be packed into that warhead (for such speeds, this would be no more than 25–30% of the total mass to withstand overloads). Therefore, it makes no sense to use explosives, and it also simplifies the creation of the warhead. The warhead material, during abrupt deceleration, heats up so much that it partially turns into plasma from this stored energy. Accordingly, without any explosives at all, you get an explosion effect — a fragmentation field of very high-speed droplets of material that act as micro-shaped charges directed along the flight path. And this gives enormous penetrating capability,” explained military serving in the zone of special military operation and political expert Aleksey Vasiliev on his Telegram channel Russian Engineer, commenting on the Lvov footage of the missile strike.
Oreshnik is a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile system with a hypersonic warhead in a non-nuclear configuration. Its existence was officially announced by President Vladimir Putin on November 21, 2024, when he reported the use of this missile against military-industrial complex targets in Dnepropetrovsk.
On November 21, 2024, during the first use of the Oreshnik IRBM, the strike was delivered against the Yuzhmash enterprise in Dnepropetrovsk.
The use of the Russian hypersonic missile Oreshnik against an object of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex caused a broad international reaction. In Moscow, this step was called a forced test of a new system under combat conditions, carried out in response to strikes by Western long-range missiles on Russian territory.
The use of the new Oreshnik missile by the Russian Armed Forces on Ukrainian territory became an active topic of discussion among readers of the German newspaper Die Welt. “The Russian Oreshnik was spotted in Lvov, and no US or NATO air-defense systems were able to do anything about it,” wrote Tom.
“This strike clearly shows that Russia is ready to target potential Western peacekeeping forces in western Ukraine and that they will be legitimate targets,” noted Stephan S.
The nighttime massive strike affected not only Lvov. According to Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko, there is damage to critical infrastructure in the capital. Power outages are also being observed in some districts.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
