Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) confirmed that Russia used its hypersonic Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile in an overnight strike on the Lviv region, close to the EU and NATO borders.
This is only the second time this hypersonic weapon has been used in combat.
The SBU shared photos of missile fragments and called the attack on civilian infrastructure a war crime under Article 438 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code.
The strike happened during one of Russia’s largest attacks of the war, with Ukraine reporting 242 drones, 36 missiles, and one Oreshnik launched from Russia’s Kapustin Yar test range.
Explosions were heard around midnight, triggering air-raid alerts across the country.
Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed the Oreshnik launch as part of a large, precision-strike attack, saying it was aimed at drone production and energy sites.
“In the early morning hours, in response to the terrorist attack by the Kiev regime on the residence of the Russian president in the Novgorod Region, carried out in the early morning hours of December 29, 2025, the Russian Armed Forces launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range land-and sea-based weapons, including the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, as well as strike drones against critical targets on the territory of Ukraine.”
Ukrainian officials described the strike as hitting critical infrastructure, causing fires, gas shortages, and power outages during freezing weather.
Ukraine has not yet provided a full damage assessment. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated the barrage also struck Kyiv and other regions, resulting in at least four deaths, including an emergency medic.
This is the second time the Oreshnik has been used in combat. Russia first launched it on November 21, 2024, at a facility in Dnipro, reportedly with inert warheads that caused little damage.
Moscow says the Oreshnik is a hypersonic, nuclear-capable missile with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) that travels at Mach 10 and beyond. They claim the missile is “impossible to intercept” with current AD systems.
The SBU stressed that the strike’s closeness to EU and NATO borders is a serious threat to European security. They accused Russia of using harsh winter weather to disrupt vital services.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called for urgent steps, including an emergency UN Security Council meeting and talks with the Ukraine-NATO Council.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke together and called the use of the Oreshnik missile “escalatory and unacceptable,” saying Moscow’s reasons were not valid.
“It was clear Russia was using fabricated allegations to justify the attack,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the French and German leaders in the call, according to the spokeswoman.
Oreshnik Hypersonic Missile
Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that the Kremlin claims cannot be intercepted.
Russia said Oreshnik is an intermediate-range missile, meaning it can reach targets between 3,000 and 5,500 kilometres (1,860-3,400 miles) away.
Sergei Karakayev, the commander of Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces — which controls its nuclear arsenal and intercontinental ballistic missile programme — has said that Oreshnik can hit targets “throughout Europe”.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a key ally of Putin, said last month that Oreshnik had been deployed in his country, which borders NATO’s eastern flank.
Moscow promptly announced that the missile system had “entered combat duty.”
Ukraine says the missile was fired from the Kapustin Yar range, near the southern Russian city of Volgograd.
Oreshnik has “dozens of warheads, homing warheads”, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2024.
The missile, he added, does not cause mass destruction because “there is no nuclear warhead, and that means there is no nuclear contamination after its use”.
Military experts say Oreshnik could be equipped to carry nuclear warheads.
Putin said the missile’s destructive elements can reach a temperature close to that of the Sun’s surface.
“Therefore, everything in the epicentre of the explosion breaks up into fractions, into elementary particles, essentially into dust,” he said in 2024.
He added that the missile can strike “even targets that are highly protected and located at a great depth”.
It is “impossible” for modern air defences to intercept the Oreshnik, which attacks at a speed of Mach 10, or 2.5-3 kilometres per second, Putin has claimed.
Experts say the missile can travel at hypersonic speeds but cannot be manoeuvred as easily as typical hypersonic missiles.
“As with other intermediate- and intercontinental-ballistic missiles, its warheads enter the atmosphere and reach their targets at hypersonic speeds,” Marcin Andrzej Piotrowski, analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) said in 2024.
“But unlike the hypersonic weapons, Oreshnik’s warheads did not perform any manoeuvres at hypersonic speeds, which would complicate the operation of anti-missile defences,” he added after the first attack.
Putin said in 2024 that Oreshnik was “not a modernisation of an old, Soviet system” but a “modern, state-of-the-art” device.
The US defence department described Oreshnik as an “experimental” missile based on Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh ICBM.
With Agence France-Presse (AFP) Inputs
