For the third time in Russia’s war against Ukraine, it recently launched the nuclear-capable missile Oreshnik. This intermediate-range ballistic missile has been deployed against Ukrainian cities on two other notable occasions, striking Dnipro in November 2024 and Lviv in early 2026. In each of these launches, Vladimir Putin’s highly touted weapon carried no nuclear warhead.

The latest alleged target was Kyiv, in May 2026, but the third Oreshnik landed some 80 kilometres to the south, in the small neighbouring city Bila Tserkva, where it demolished three civilian garages.

Putin framed the strike not as a miss but a test of the new missile — the same justification he used after the launch on Dnipro two years earlier.

Without a nuclear warhead, Oreshnik’s destructive power derives solely from its kinetic energy, which makes it comparable to other high-speed ballistic missiles carrying conventional warheads. So why is Russia using these missiles, estimated to cost around US$50 million each, when it would be 10 to 30 times cheaper to strike Ukraine with conventional ballistic missiles?

This cost disparity reveals Russia’s strategic commitment to maintaining the weapon’s nuclear status at all costs — the missile functions less as a tactical weapon and more as a medium. And as Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously noted, the medium is the message. Oreshnik’s strikes must be seen as part of a broader Russian strategy: nuclear terror.

Whenever the possibility of Russia’s nuclear use is discussed, experts are........

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