Forbes’ Claim of Russia’s Failed Oreshnik Launch Questioned

Writing for Forbes on Thursday, the US military commentator David Axe, citing Ukrainian milblogger Kyrylo Sazonov, said it seemed “likely” that Russia had attempted to fire a second Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) against the Ukrainian capital.

Sazonov wrote on his Telegram channel: “Something heavy (presumably the vaunted ‘Oreshnik’) was launched from the Astrakhan region at the territory of Ukraine. The possible target was Kyiv. But the missile did not fly far and fell on their territory.”

Very quickly after the article was published, other milbloggers began to question both Sazonov’s and Axe’s “unverified” assertion.

Typical of these expressions of doubt was the Insider.ua Telegram channel which wrote: “Forbes information about the launch of ‘Oreshnik’ today in Kyiv is questionable – our sources do not confirm this information.”

While it was true that an alarm had been sounded in Kyiv at around the time of the alleged launch and several Ukrainian social media sites warned of an unspecified ballistic threat, there were no reports of any attack on the capital or elsewhere. The alarm in Kyiv was pulled after 31 minutes.

Later that evening Boris Davidenko the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes’ Ukraine edition wrote an apology on Facebook for the use of unverified information obtained from a single source in Axe’s story:

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“I learned tonight the meaning of double Spanish shame. This was caused by the

American author and those Ukrainian colleagues who hyped and scared our readers, by relying on ‘the very uncertain assumptions of a military blogger,’ the original source [of the story].”

On Nov. 21, a few days after the Kremlin warned the US of its intention to launch a non-nuclear ballistic missile against Ukraine in line with the “Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement,” the eastern city of Dnipro was struck by multiple non-explosive kinetic projectiles released by a previously unknown IRBM.

Later that day Russian President Vladimir Putin said during an unscheduled television appearance that the strike had been a successful combat test of the Oreshnik (hazelnut) missile. He claimed it was “one of Russia’s newest mid-range missile systems” launched in a “non-nuclear hypersonic configuration,” which he referred to as.

In fact, Western analysis suggests that the missile is merely a modified Russian RS-26 Rubezh (NATO: SS-X-31) inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), which utilizes a lower fuel capacity to bring down its maximum range to allow it to be classified as an IRBM rather than an ICBM and thereby avoid violating the international agreements around such weapons.

Even if it is later proved that a failed launch of the Oreshnik missile had taken place, the fact that it failed should be of no surprise and even of reassurance to the Ukrainian population. Both the RS-26 and its more modern big brother the RS-28 Sarmat (NATO: SS-X-29/30 Satan II) have suffered several failures during their development.

On Sept. 21, 2024, an RS-28 exploded during a test launch that destroyed its launch silo at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk Region according to a report by the Institute of the Study of War (ISW).