On Sunday, the intermediate-range projectile struck an undisclosed location in Bila Tserkva, a town in greater Kyiv, the Ukrainian army said.

In early January, the hypersonic missile hit a major gas depot in the Lviv region in western Ukraine, local officials said.

Named after the Russian word for hazel tree, it was first fired at a plant in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in 2024, Moscow said. The rocket did not carry a nuclear payload in any of the three strikes.

Here is what we know about the weapon:

- Range -

Russia said Oreshnik is an intermediate-range missile, meaning it can reach targets between 3,000 and 5,500 kilometres (1,860-3,400 miles) away.

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

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a key ally of Russia's leader Vladimir Putin, said that Oreshnik had been deployed in his country, which borders NATO's eastern flank.

Moscow promptly announced that the missile system had "entered combat duty".

Ukraine says the missile was fired from the Kapustin Yar range, near the southern Russian city of Volgograd.

- Power -

Oreshnik has "dozens of warheads, homing warheads", Putin said in 2024.

The missile itself, he added, does not cause mass destruction because "there is no nuclear warhead, and that means there is no nuclear contamination after its use".

Military experts say Oreshnik could be equipped to carry nuclear warheads.

Putin said the missile's destructive elements can reach a temperature close to the surface of the Sun.

"Therefore everything in the epicentre of the explosion breaks up into fractions, into elementary particles, essentially into dust," he said in 2024.

He added that the missile can strike "even targets that are highly protected and located at a great depth".

At the site of the first Oreshnik strike on Dnipro in 2024, AFP saw limited damage -- a building roof blown off and scorched trees. Ukrainian officials also reported only limited destruction, suggesting it had been equipped with dummy warheads.

Residents reported a "hellish noise" and bright bursts of light during the strike.

- Speed -

Putin has claimed it is "impossible" for modern air defences to intercept the Oreshnik, which attacks at a speed of Mach 10, or 2.5-3 kilometres per second.

Experts say the missile can travel at hypersonic speeds, but cannot be manoeuvred in the same way typical hypersonic missiles can.

"As with other intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missiles, its warheads enter the atmosphere and reach their targets at hypersonic speeds," Marcin Andrzej Piotrowski, analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), said in 2024.

"But unlike the hypersonic weapons, Oreshnik's warheads did not perform any manoeuvres at hypersonic speeds, which would complicate the operation of anti-missile defences," he added after the first attack.

- Origins -

Putin said in 2024 that Oreshnik was "not a modernisation of an old, Soviet system" but a "modern, state-of-the-art" device.

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

Karakayev said the missile, a "ground-based medium-range system", had been constructed based on an order from Putin issued in July 2023.