Moscow reveals purpose of Oreshnik missile test

Moscow will use all means at its disposal to defend its national interests, and hopes Washington has understood this after the test launch of the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told US journalist Tucker Carlson.

Carlson, who interviewed President Vladimir Putin earlier this year, returned to Russia to speak with Lavrov after unsuccessful attempts to sit down with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.

“We don’t want to aggravate the situation, but since ATACMS and other long-range weapons are being used against mainland Russia as it were, we are sending signals,” Lavrov said. “We hope that the last one, a couple of weeks ago, the signal with the new weapon system called Oreshnik, was taken seriously.”

Russia launched the hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian military-industrial facility in Dnepropetrovsk. Videos making rounds on social media showed bolts of light from the sky impacting deep underground, followed by secondary explosions. The site has been off-limits to the press ever since.

Half an hour before the launch of the Oreshnik, Russia sent a message to the US using the nuclear deconfliction line, so “that they don’t mistake it for anything bigger and real dangerous,” according to Lavrov. Carlson noted that Oreshnik “sounds very dangerous” on its own.

“The message is that you, I mean the US and the allies of the US, who also provide these long-range weapons to the Kiev regime, they must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call strategic defeat of Russia,” Lavrov told Carlson. Moscow is “ready to do anything to defend our legitimate interests,” he added.

Referring to the recent comments of an American admiral about the theoretical acceptability of using atomic weapons, Lavrov said that this kind of rhetoric was “really worrying” and appears to assume that Russia does not have ‘red lines’ or is not willing to enforce them.

“This is a very serious mistake,” the Russian diplomat said.

Asked whether the US and Russia are at war, Lavrov said that it’s an undeclared, “hybrid war” at the moment and Moscow is letting Washington know that it should not escalate.

Since an actual war with the US “would take a nuclear character,” the veteran diplomat explained, “we would certainly like to avoid any misunderstanding. And since some people in Washington and some people in London, in Brussels, seem to be not very capable [of understanding], we will send additional messages if they don’t draw necessary conclusions.”