LAST UPDATE | 31 Dec 2025

RUSSIA’S NUCLEAR CAPABLE Oreshnik missile system has entered active service in Belarus, Russia’s defence ministry said yesterday.

The claim comes as US efforts to broker a deal to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine have entered a pivotal stage.

Russia’s defence ministry released a video showing combat vehicles that are part of the mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile system driving across a forest as part of combat training.

The ministry’s announcement followed a statement from Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, who said earlier this month that the Oreshnik had arrived in the country.

Lukashenko said that up to 10 such missile systems would be stationed in Belarus. 

Russian president Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that the Oreshnik would enter combat duty before the year’s end.

He made the statement at a meeting with top Russian military officers, where he warned that Moscow would seek to extend its gains in Ukraine if Kyiv and its western allies rejected the Kremlin’s demands in peace talks.

The announcement comes at a critical time for Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

US president Donald Trump hosted Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at his Florida resort on Sunday and insisted that Kyiv and Moscow were “closer than ever before” to a peace settlement.

But Moscow and Kyiv remain deeply divided on key issues, including whose forces withdraw from where in Ukraine and the fate of

Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, one of the 10 biggest in the world. 

Strikes

Damaged buildings and the emergency operations center in the Primorsky district of Odesa last week. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Today, Russian strikes wounded six people in Odesa including three children, the Ukrainian city’s military administration said.

“Drones attacked the residential, logistical, and energy infrastructure of our region,” Odesa’s military administration regional head Oleg Kiper said on Telegram.

Two children aged eight and 14 were wounded in the attack, as well as a seven-month-old baby, Sergiy Lysak, head of the city’s military administration, said in a separate Telegram post.

A 42-year-old man was also wounded and is in “serious condition”, he added. In his latest update early on Wednesday he put the overall toll at six.

He said residential, logistical, and energy infrastructure was targeted. Parts of Odesa lost heating and water supplies.

Elsewhere Russian drones wounded two men in the Dnipropetrovsk region, its military administration head Vladyslav Gaivanenko said on Telegram.

The strikes came after Ukraine denied launching a drone attack on one of Putin’s residences and accused Moscow of peddling falsehoods to manipulate talks on ending the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has called Russia’s claim a “complete fabrication”, said he would meet with leaders of Kyiv’s allies on 6 January in France in a bid to renew peace efforts.

The Kremlin said yesterday that it considered the alleged drone attack on Putin’s secluded residence in the Novgorod region to be a “terrorist act” and a “personal attack against Putin”.

But it said it could not provide evidence for its claim as the drones were “all shot down”.

- With reporting by AFP