Even Russians themselves do not believe Putin’s statements about Oreshnik - Media
Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin (Getty Images)
Russian President Vladimir Putin called the ineffective strikes using the Oreshnik intermediate-range missiles ordinary tests. He claimed they deliberately targeted "barns," which sparked outrage among Russian military bloggers, according to Forbes.
Details of Putin’s statement
According to the outlet, during an interview with pro-Kremlin media, Putin tried to downplay the significance of another ineffective use of Oreshnik missiles.
He said that what was previously presented as a large-scale retaliatory strike in response to Ukrainian attacks turned out to be merely a "test of their operations as if on a testing ground." The Russian leader claimed that Russia deliberately chose empty areas and "barns" so that drones could later record the accuracy of the warheads’ impact.
However, foreign experts consider this statement an attempt to conceal a technical failure of their new "superweapon."
During the attack on May 24, 2026, one of the Oreshnik missiles fell in Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region, damaging ordinary civilian garages and an abandoned factory. Another missile landed in the occupied territory of the Donetsk region. At the same time, the missile submunitions were found to be made of cheap cast iron instead of tungsten or steel.
Reaction of Russian military bloggers
Such Kremlin justifications triggered a wave of outrage and mockery among Russian military commentators. Previously, propaganda had actively convinced the public that the Oreshnik missile had destroyed highly important strategic facilities and "NATO underground bases."
"Remember how all the TV scum, rolling their eyes, excitedly described what super-strategic enterprises we'd destroyed with Oreshnik? Today, President Putin confirmed that barns were indeed hit," analysts quote one angry Russian blogger as saying.
Other commentators were openly disappointed with the scale of Moscow’s promised "retaliation."
"So much for retaliatory strikes. It's simply unbelievable. A big hello to everyone who wrote about NATO’s underground bases!" one disgruntled propagandist wrote.
Military bloggers have also begun questioning Russia’s ability to deliver a real response to its battlefield losses, since the use of expensive weaponry turned out to be nothing more than empty tests.
In addition, due to the ineffective strikes, Ukraine gained access to fragments and electronic components of the Oreshnik system, which fully compromised classified technical data of the design.
Mass strike on Ukraine and Kremlin statements
On the night of May 24, 2026, Russia carried out a massive combined strike on Ukraine using various types of missiles and hundreds of attack drones.
As reported by RBC-Ukraine, the main target of the attack was Kyiv. In total, radio-technical troops detected 690 aerial attack assets, including Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles, Zircon anti-ship missiles, and an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
At that time, the Air Defense Forces reported shooting down 55 missiles and 549 drones of various modifications. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Air Force confirmed that during this attack, Russian occupation forces fired an Oreshnik missile at the Kyiv region.
Later, in early June, Vladimir Putin attempted to deny reports of technical failures of the missile that fell in the occupied territory of the Donetsk region.
During his speech at a forum in St. Petersburg, the Russian President called the Oreshnik launches purely test firings and claimed that the warheads falling on civilian objects and "barns" were allegedly part of a special plan to assess dispersion accuracy before "full-scale deployment."
