Russia's use of hypersonic missile brings fresh threat to Europe and NATO

Russia's inclusion of the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) in its latest missile and drone strikes on Ukraine has drawn attention well beyond the immediate battlefield - raising urgent questions about the wider security implications for Europe and NATO alike.

The nuclear-capable, hypersonic missile was launched against Lviv on 8 January as part of an intensive overnight attack on western, central and southeastern Ukraine, comprising 278 Russian missiles and drones. While the physical damage caused specifically by the Oreshnik strike in Lviv was largely contained to the workshop of a state enterprise, the significance of this attack lies in what it signals rather than what it destroyed.

With a reported range of up to 5,500 kilometres, it theoretically puts much of Europe within reach. Its immense speed of Mach 10-11, too, is integral to its danger: the faster a missile travels, the less time missile defence systems have to detect, track and intercept it.

The Royal United Services Institute has previously assessed that an IRBM travelling at Mach 10 could reach Britain within 10 minutes if launched from western Russia. While Ukraine has hit successful missile interception rates of 80% in the past, this dropped to a new low of 54% shot down or suppressed by the last quarter of 2025; hypersonic ballistic missile systems are designed to reduce those interception rates even further.

Some defence analysts have questioned whether Oreshnik is as groundbreaking as Vladimir Putin has often claimed, suggesting it may be a modified version of the existing RS-26 Rubezh IRBM missile. Read more:Russia fires hypersonic missile at Ukraine near NATO borderWhat we know about the hypersonic Oreshnik missile Nevertheless, Ukraine's foreign minister Andrii Sybiha described Oreshnik as a "grave threat" to European security.

It is easy to see why: the missile struck infrastructure in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, around 40 miles from the Polish border. Poland, of course, has already had its nerves tested by the Kremlin on numerous occasions, most notably experiencing an incursion of its airspace by Russian drones in September 2025.

This brings the use of such a system ever closer to NATO territory than its previous use in November 2024, which struck at the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Initial assessments suggest that the latest Oreshnik strike, as with the last one, may have carried inert, non-explosive warheads, limiting the immediate destruction caused by the missile itself.

However, defence experts stress that showcasing the missile's capabilities - speed, range and survivability - is the real message from the Russians. The timing of the launch is especially pointed given Russia's recent changes to its nuclear deterrence doctrine and lowering of its threshold for a nuclear response.

Even more concernedly, it comes just after Moscow's heated warning that any British and French military "units and facilities" deployed to Ukraine under any future peace deal would be considered legitimate targets. Given Oreshnik's reputation as a missile that can "pulverise" underground bunkers, the wider security implications for Ukrainian and NATO infrastructure, like military and storage facilities (not to mention their personnel), cannot be ignored.

With Putin having expressed his intentions to employ the missile with more conventional payloads as well, a more frequent appearance of Oreshnik in the war with Ukraine cannot be ruled out entirely. For now, though, its rare appearances have added to both its menace and mystique.

Oreshnik, then, is more than just a military weapon deployed against Ukraine: it can also be read as a warning shot from the Kremlin against what it calls "foreign interference" from Ukraine's Western allies and partners. While the most recent Oreshnik strike may not represent an imminent military threat to NATO, it does raise the strategic temperature, exposes vulnerabilities in Western missile defences, and forces NATO leaders to consider worst-case scenarios - underlining just how closely the war in Ukraine is tied to European security more broadly..