In an unscheduled television appearance on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike on the city of Dnipro had tested in combat conditions "one of the newest Russian mid-range missile systems".

He said missile engineers had christened the missile Oreshnik, or hazel tree, in Russian.

Putin said it had been deployed "in a non-nuclear hypersonic configuration", and that the "test" had been successful and had hit its target.

On Friday he said future tests would be carried out, including in "combat conditions", and ordered Oreshnik be put into serial production.

- Speed -

Air defences cannot intercept the Oreshnik, which attacks at a speed of Mach 10, or 2.5-3 kilometres (1.6-1.9 miles) per second, Putin said.

Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds of at least Mach 5 -- five times the speed of sound -- and can manoeuvre mid-flight, making them harder to track and intercept.

"Modern air defence systems... cannot intercept such missiles. That's impossible," Putin said.

"As of today there are no means of counteracting such a weapon," the president boasted.

Ukraine's GUR military intelligence wrote on Telegram that the missile took 15 minutes to fly from the Kapustin Yar range in the Astrakhan region to the city of Dnipro, a distance of around 800 kilometres (490 miles), reaching a final speed of over Mach 11.

- Warheads -

The Oreshnik missile could have three to six warheads, military expert Viktor Baranets wrote in the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid.

Ukraine's GUR said it had six.

Igor Korotchenko, editor of the Moscow-based National Defence journal, told the TASS state news agency that based on video footage of the strike, Oreshnik has multiple independently guided warheads.

In this case they were conventional, but it could also carry nuclear warheads, military experts said.

The "practically simultaneous arrival of the warheads at the target" shows the system is "very effective", Korotchenko said, calling it a "masterpiece of modern Russian solid-fuel military missile construction".

- Range -

Putin described the missile in Russian as "medium-range" but Russian military experts said the English term would be "intermediate-range".

An intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) has a range of 1,000-5,500 kilometres, a level below that of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Sergey Karakayev, the commander of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces -- which controls its nuclear arsenal and intercontinental ballistic missile programme -- said Friday that Oreshnik can hit targets "throughout Europe".

Military expert Ilya Kramnik told the Izvestia newspaper that Oreshnik's range could be at the top end of intermediate, around 3,000 to 5,000 kilometres.

"In any case we witnessed the first combat use in history by Russia of an intermediate-range missile," Dmitry Kornev, editor of Military Russia website, told Izvestia.

- Origins -

Putin said Friday that Oreshnik was "not a modernisation of an old, Soviet system," but a "modern, state-of the art" device.

The US Department of Defense described Oreshnik as an "experimental" missile based on Russia's RS-26 Rubezh ICBM.

Little is known about Rubezh, a modification of Topol ICBM.

The head of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces said the missile, a "ground-based medium-range system", had been constructed based on an order from Putin issued in July 2023.

The head of Ukraine's GUR military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said his agency knew of just two prototypes of the missile, although there could be slightly more, and the weapon is "not yet in serial production".

Russian weapons expert Yan Matveyev wrote on Telegram that Oreshnik probably had two stages and would be "quite expensive" and heavy, with mass production unlikely.

Putin said Friday that Russia had a "stockpile" of them and ordered the missile be put into "serial production."

- Threat -

Both Putin and missile forces commander Karakayev said Oreshnik could be as powerful as a nuclear strike if deployed alongside other conventional long-range weapons.

"The mass use of such a type of such weapon will be comparable to the use of a nuclear weapon," Karakayev said in a televised meeting.

Putin bragged that no other countries possess a missile like Oreshnik and that it was impervious both to current and future air defence systems.

The United States and the Soviet Union in 1987 signed a treaty agreeing to give up all use of missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.

Both Washington and Moscow withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, each accusing the other of violations.

Putin said Thursday that Russia will "address the question of further deployment of intermediate and shorter-range missiles based on the actions of the United States and its satellites".