President Putin Challenges West To Intercept Orestnik Missiles In Kyiv

President Putin during an annual press conference. (Source: Mikhail Tereshenko / TASS)

JAKARTA - President Vladimir Putin challenged the West to intercept a new Russian missile previously claimed no one was capable of intercepting it during an annual press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

This annual press conference was moderated by Alexandra Suvorova and Dmitry Kulko, after previously opening by Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, quoted from the Kremlin website.

In addition to economic issues and conflicts in Ukraine, a number of things that are in the spotlight on this occasion are negotiations with Ukraine, Donald Trump, conditions in Syria and the Orestnik missile.

Regarding Oreshnik, President Putin 'problemed' the West to carry out a 'duel' of technology with the West trying to intercept Russia's latest missile.

"Let them contact us and those in the West as well as the US pay for their analysis to conduct a kind of technology experiment and conduct a 21st century-style high-tech duel," President Putin said, quoted from TASS December 19.

"Let them select targets, for example, in Kyiv and collect their air defense systems and missiles there, while we will launch the Orestnik missile to those targets. We'll see what happens. We're ready for such experiments," President Putin explained.

Russia fired the Orestnik missile for the first time on November 21, hitting a military target in Dnipro, Ukraine after the United States and Britain allowed Kyiv to use Western weapons to strike deep into Russian territory.

"There is no way to counter the missile at this time. Oreshnik hit the target at Mach 10, or 2.5 to 3 kilometers per second," President Putin said last month.

A day later, President Putin emphasized that Oreshnik was a Russian innovation, not modernizing the Soviet Union's legacy technology.

Last week he said that if the availability of sufficient Orestnik missiles was available, Russia would no longer consider using nuclear weapons.

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the use of several Orestnik missile systems at the same time as nuclear weapons, saying production of the new series of weapons would begin soon.