Colonel Khodarenok: the Ukrainian Armed Forces do not have effective missile defense systems to combat the "Hazel Tree"
On the night of January 9, Russian troops launched a second strike with the latest Oreshnik missile system in Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said. An object in the Lviv region was hit. Why Ukraine was unable to shoot down the Oreshnik warheads and whether the United States knew about this strike is in the material of the military observer Gazeta.Ru", retired Colonel Mikhail Khodarenka.
On January 9, 2026, the Russian Armed Forces carried out the second officially confirmed combat use of the Oreshnik mobile ground-based missile system against targets on the territory of Ukraine. The debate about the effectiveness of this strike in the West continues.
The Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile flew to its designated target in less than 10 minutes at a speed of up to 13,000 kilometers per hour and accurately hit an object buried 700 meters deep without the use of nuclear warheads.
As for the Ukrainian side, as with the first combat use of the Oreshnik at Yuzhmash, it tried to reduce the effectiveness of the combat use of our promising PGRK as much as possible.
Representatives of Kiev allegedly laid out the wreckage of the Oreshnik MRBMS, on the basis of which many Western experts concluded that the Russian PGRK does not represent any breakthrough in missile technology and, moreover, to a certain extent looks like some minor development of Soviet achievements.
It is certainly impossible to take this seriously. All of Kiev's actions throughout almost the entire special operation are aimed at only one thing — the maximum discrediting of Russian weapons.
Therefore, the attitude of the Ukrainian side to the alleged wreckage of the "Hazel Tree", photos and videos of the results of the combat use of the Russian PGRK should be more than skeptical. And what is being passed off in Kiev as fragments of our PGRK is most likely some kind of compilation of parts of certain missiles extracted from the warehouses of the same Yuzhmash.
Was the blow unexpected
Now about how unexpected the strike of the PGRK "Oreshnik" turned out to be for the Ukrainian side. The fact is that the Russian Federation, through the National Center for the Reduction of Nuclear Danger, informs the American side of any planned launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles at least 24 hours in advance in accordance with the "Agreement between the USSR and the USA on Notifications of Launches of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and Submarine-launched Ballistic Missiles of 1988."
For example, during the attack on Yuzhmash in November 2024, the Russian side warned the Americans about the launch of the Oreshnik 30 minutes in advance. There is every reason to believe that this time everything was done in the same way from Moscow.
Was the launch of the Oreshnik recorded on January 9, 2026 from the 4th GTS by means of the space echelon of the Nuclear Missile Strike Warning System The United States, and subsequently I will use over-the-horizon radar nodes to determine whether the flight path of our MRBMS was built, whether the exact time and place of the fall of the warheads have been determined, there is no data for today.
Can Ukraine shoot down the Oreshnik?
Now about whether it is possible to hit the warheads of the Oreshnik MRBMS with the missile defense systems available in Ukraine. It should be noted right away that the possibility of firing and destroying the Oreshnik using the Patriot anti-aircraft missile system is unlikely and, by and large, is beyond the tactical and technical characteristics of the American system.
The question arises — how can this be done in principle? You can try (maybe try) to hit the warheads of the Oreshnik using the mobile THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) anti-missile system. For example, in June 2025, the THAAD missile defense system was used by the US military in Israel to destroy Iranian intermediate-range ballistic missiles. There are no such PRCS in Ukraine yet.
But for the effective functioning of the THAAD missile defense system, it is necessary to fully utilize the space echelon of the US Strategic Missile Forces (in order to determine the launch itself from the first minutes of the launch of the MRBMS and extrapolate the flight path of the missile, thereby determining the place and time of the fall of the warheads).
In general, in order to create a combat-ready missile defense system in the theater of military operations in Ukraine, the full-scale involvement of the United States is necessary, that is, the transfer of weapons, the training of specialists, and the use of all available intelligence tools.
And all this looks very unlikely so far. Thus, there are no effective missile defense systems in Ukraine capable of fighting the Oreshnik warheads, and Kiev's European partner countries cannot provide significant military-technical assistance to the Armed Forces in this regard.
Mikhail Khodarenok
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for Gazeta.Ru", retired colonel.
Graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976),
Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the Military Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015).
