Moscow Claims Oreshnik Missile Can Hit Deveselu Base in 5 Minutes

A map showing the range of Russia’s recently unveiled hypersonic missile, the Oreshnik, suggests the weapon could hit U.S. military targets in Europe within minutes, Newsweek reports. Romania is on the map, via the Deveselu military base.

“Russia continues its efforts to intimidate Europe with the Oreshnik,” Anton Geraschenko, a former adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, posted on Twitter on Monday. Geraschenko posted a map, which was allegedly shared on Telegram by Russian “propaganda” channels, that shows the approach time of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile if launched from Belarus.

According to the map, the Oreshnik is capable of flying from Brest, Belarus, to the U.S. Deveselu Air Force Base in southern Romania in 5.5 minutes and to another base in Poland in just 3.2 minutes.

The weapon could also reach several European capitals in a comparable time frame, including Paris and London, in less than nine minutes. While the missile’s 5,500 km range would be shorter than the distance from Belarus to the American continent, this would still allow it to reach American military assets in Europe, as well as those in the Middle East and Gulf states.

The ballistic missile was first revealed on November 21, when it struck a military industrial facility in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The new missile — which Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate said was launched from Astrakhan, Russia — reached a top speed of more than Mach 11 (8,400 mph) before impact. Hours after the strike, which Vladimir Putin called a “successful test,” the Russian president praised the weapon’s capabilities. He said there were “no countermeasures at present” against the Oreshnik missile, which is capable of “hitting targets at a speed of Mach 10,” or 11,100 feet per second.

The Deveselu missile shield is one of the most important military bases in Europe, because it protects a large part of the continent.

Dugin threatens Romania again, praises Calin Georgescu

Alexandr Dugin, Putin’s ideologue, is once again threatening Romania, along with Ukraine and other countries in the region. “Eastern Europe will either be neutral or ours,” he said, once again recalling Călin Georgescu, the pro-Russian candidate for the presidency of Romania, whom he said “understands very well” this.

Alexandr Dugin made the statement in a debate with political scientist John Mearsheimer, hosted by a Chinese state-funded university. Asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions, Dugin said: “As for Ukraine, it should remain, from Putin’s point of view, either neutral or ours. It failed with neutrality, so it should be ours.”

“As for Eastern Europe, I would say the same thing: either it will be neutral or it will be ours. People like Orban (Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, n.d.) or Georgescu from Romania, understand this very well,” he continued.

“We cannot tolerate hostile, weak and aggressive entities at a dangerous distance from us. The threat from Ukraine is existential, but the threat from Eastern Europe is less existential, I think it can be negotiated,” Dugin argued.

This is not the first time that Putin’s ideologue has threatened Romania. At the beginning of the month, an account associated with him wrote that we will be part of Russia, soon. The post was deleted shortly after, however. After the first round of the presidential elections, Dugin praised Călin Georgescu. He said about him, in an interview, that he is “an outstanding candidate”, “useful for Russia”.