A terrifying new map has shown how an attack on the UK by Russia using a new missile could level the country in eight minutes.
In November, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a television address that his country had launched an Oreshnik missile at Ukraine.
The Ukrainian city of Dnipro was hit by an air strike on November 21.
The name means hazel tree in Russian; Putin claimed the weapon travelled at ten times the speed of sound.
The head of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, Gen. Sergei Karakayev, has said that the Oreshnik missile is capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads and could reach any European target.
The United States says that the ordinance was an experimental type of intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) based on Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
A former advisor to Ukraine’s internal affairs minister, Anton Gerashchenko, has shared a map reportedly being shared on Russian propaganda Telegram channels.
It features the Oreshnik missile’s approach time to targets in the West, including London, if one were to be launched from Belarus.
“Nuclear sabre-rattling is now joined by an Oreshnik-jingling,” he wrote on X.
Reuters reports that Putin has said the missiles could be deployed to Belarus in late 2025. Belarus is led by Alexander Lukashenko, a staunch ally of Russia.
The map is based on the missiles travelling from Eastern Europe at three kilometres per second.
From the city of Brest, it claims that a strike could hit the UK in 8.8 minutes.
Putin added during his television address: “In response to the use of American and British long-range weapons on November 21 of this year, the Russian armed forces launched a combined strike on one of the facilities of the Ukrainian defence industry.”
He also said: “One of the newest Russian medium-range missile systems was tested in combat conditions, in this case, with a ballistic missile in a non-nuclear hypersonic warhead.”
The Russian President added: “We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”
