Putin
says Russia fired experimental ballistic missile into Ukraine
President
says missile was in reply to Kyiv’s strikes in Russia with western missiles,
and appears to directly threaten US and UK
Pjotr Sauer,
Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv and Andrew Roth in Washington
Thu 21 Nov
2024 20.13 GMT
Vladimir
Putin has said Russia fired an experimental ballistic missile at a military
site in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday morning, and that Moscow “had
the right” to strike western countries that provided Kyiv with weapons used
against Russian targets.
The Russian
president, speaking during an unannounced televised address to the nation,
appeared to directly threaten the US and UK, who earlier this week allowed
Ukraine to fire western-made Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles into Russia.
The new
ballistic missile was called Oreshnik [the hazel], Putin said, and its
deployment “was a response to US plans to produce and deploy intermediate and
short-range missiles”. He said Russia would “respond decisively and
symmetrically” in the event of an escalation.
“Russia
reserves the right to use weapons against targets in countries that permit
their weapons to be used against Russian targets,” Putin added, in his most
explicit threat to attack western countries who have been providing military
aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
US and UK
sources indicated that they believed the missile fired on Dnipro was an
experimental nuclear-capable, intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM),
which has a theoretical range of below 3,420 miles (5,500km). That is enough to
reach Europe from where it was fired in south-western Russia, but not the US.
Ukraine’s
air force had initially claimed Russia had fired a longer-range
intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). However, the president, Volodymyr
Zelenskyy, later softened the claim to say the missile fired had “all the
parameters” of an ICBM in terms of speed and altitude of flight.
“Obviously,
Putin is using Ukraine as a testing ground. Obviously, Putin is terrified when
normal life simply exists next to him,” Zelenskyy said. “When a country simply
wants to be and has the right to be independent.”
In a
statement published on Telegram, Zelenskyy later said the missile strike was
“final proof that Russia definitely does not want peace”.
The missile
was fired from the Astrakhan region of Russia, Ukraine’s air force said,
meaning that it travelled about 500 miles to reach its target, as part of a
wider salvo of nine missiles between 5am and 7am. Six of the missiles were
intercepted by Ukraine’s air force but the new ballistic missile was not
stopped.
Video of the
incident from a distance showed the ground being struck in multiple flashes,
though damage and casualty reports were modest. The missile was said to have
hit “without consequences”, Ukraine’s air force said, though it added that
complete information about victims had yet to be received.
Fabian
Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at Oslo University who specialises in
missile technology and nuclear strategy, said the significance of the Oreshnik
missile strike was that it appeared to carry a type of payload that “is
exclusively associated with nuclear-capable missiles”.
Ukraine used
US Atacms missiles to target what it said was a weapons depot in Russia’s
south-western Bryansk region on Monday, and fired a salvo of Storm Shadow
missiles on Wednesday at a command post in Kursk, where Kyiv’s forces hold a
small bridgehead of territory inside Russia.
Ukraine had
previously used both weapons to strike targets inside its internationally
recognised borders, but had been lobbying the US and UK for months to allow it
to strike airfields, bases and depots deeper inside Russia.
Both sides
are stepping up their military efforts in the near three-year-long war ahead of
the inauguration of Donald Trump on 20 January. The Republican president-elect
has said he wants to end the war, though it is unclear how he proposes to do
so, and each side is hoping to improve its battlefield position before he takes
office.
A US
official told the Guardian that Russia had launched an “experimental
intermediate-range ballistic missile” at Ukraine, of which Russia likely
possesses only a “handful”. UK sources made similar comments and the weapon was
described as having a range of a few thousand kilometres.
Russia is
required by a treaty to inform the US of the launch of certain kinds of
ballistic missiles, in the hopes of preventing an escalatory ladder that could
lead to an all-out nuclear war.
A US
official said Russia had “pre-notified” Washington of the launch before the
attack in an attempt to prevent a retaliation – though Russia said it had only
done so 30 minutes before through the US’s Nuclear Threat Reduction Center,
according to the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov.
On Wednesday
the US suddenly announced that its embassy in Kyiv would be closed that day
after receiving warning of a “potential significant air attack” somewhere in
Ukraine. No further details were provided and, after a nervous day in the
Ukrainian capital, the embassy reopened.
The US
official also told the Guardian that Russia may have used the weapon as an
attempt to “intimidate Ukraine and its supporters” or attract public attention,
but that the weapon would not be a “gamechanger” in the conflict. “Russia
likely possesses only a handful of these experimental missiles,” the official
said.
Earlier on
Thursday, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, appeared
to inadvertently reveal some details about the early-morning strike during a
live press briefing.
A hot mic
captured Zakharova’s phone conversation with an unidentified caller who
instructed her not to comment “on the ballistic missile strike”. Notably, the
caller did not use the word intercontinental.
In the brief
telephone exchange – footage of which remains available on the foreign
ministry’s official account on X – the caller appears to disclose that the
strike targeted the Yuzhmash military facility in Dnipro.
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