'Military secret' about Oreshnik and 'death' of Russian economy: Key takeaways from Putin's Q&A

RT.com
05 Jun 2026, 04:01 GMT+10

The Russian president answered questions on domestic and foreign policy at the economic forum in St. Petersburg

Russian President Vladimir Putin fielded questions from the heads of international news agencies on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday. The agencies included Chinese, Belarusian, German, French, Spanish, and Iranian state news outlets, as well as representatives of Reuters and the Associated Press.

The mammoth Q&A session lasted just over two hours and touched on a variety of subjects, including Russian domestic and foreign policy, the Ukraine conflict, the US-Israeli war on Iran, and potential routes to rapprochement with Europe.

Here are the main topics discussed.

The Russian economy

When asked whether Russia could withstand the economic strain caused by the conflict in Ukraine and Western sanctions, Putin replied by citing Mark Twain's joke: "Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated."

Despite past public statements in the West claiming that Russia's economy had been "torn to shreds," it has grown more than three times faster than that of the EU over the past three years, he stressed.

Russia has been forced to make some "tough decisions" to battle inflation, such as raising interest rates, but the "measures are yielding results," according to Putin. In the meantime, Russian industrial production and citizens' real incomes have continued to grow, he said.

In terms of purchasing power parity, a measure of how much the same basket of goods costs in different countries, Russia has surpassed all European countries, he said.

'State secret' about Oreshnik

Russia did not use its Oreshnik dual-capable intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile "in the full sense" in strikes on Ukrainian territory.

"We have not had a single combat use of the Oreshnik in the full sense of the word on Ukrainian territory," Putin said, noting that Russia had previously "tested similar systems at training grounds, but not the Oreshnik."

Russia has confirmed three separate strikes on Ukraine using the missile, which is designed to carry both nuclear and conventional warheads: against a defense industry facility in Dnepr in late 2024, a warplane plant in Lviv in January, and an unspecified target, dubbed by critics a "shed," in the town of Belaya Tserkov near Kiev in May.

"Last time, to be completely honest - I'll reveal to you a big military state secret - we just hit where it was convenient for us to see the results," Putin said, adding that Russian drones later flew in to this "shed" to observe dispersal and impact effects. "It's important for us to make decisions in the future on the full-scale use of Oreshnik against designated targets, including in urban areas."

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