Russia attacked Ukraine with a new ballistic missile, Putin said

The Kremlin launched a new medium-range ballistic missile at Ukraine on Thursday in response to Kiev’s use this week of American and British missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory, President Vladimir Putin said.

In a televised address to the country, the Russian president warned that US air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile, which he said travels at ten times the speed of sound and which he called “Oreshnik” – Russian for “walnut tree”. ” He also said it could be used to attack any Ukrainian ally whose missiles are being used to attack Russia.

“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military targets of countries that allow their weapons to be used against our targets,” Putin said in his first comments since President Joe Biden this month gave Ukraine the green light to use American ATACMS systems. missiles to attack limited targets inside Russia.

Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed that the Russian missile is a new experimental type of medium-range missile based on the RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile.

“This was a new type of lethal weapon that was deployed on the battlefield and that was certainly a concern,” Singh said, noting that the missile can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. According to her, the United States was notified before the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels.

Putin said the attack on the central Ukrainian city of Dnepr came in response to Kiev’s use of longer-range US and British missiles in strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday in southern Russia. According to him, as a result of these attacks, a fire broke out at an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of Russia, and several law enforcement officers were killed and wounded in the Kursk region.

“If aggressive actions escalate, we will respond decisively and in kind,” the Russian president said, adding that Western leaders hatching plans to use their forces against Moscow should “think about it seriously.”

Putin said the Oreshnik missile fired on Thursday hit a famous missile factory in the Dnieper. He also said Russia would issue advance warning if it carried out new Hazel strikes on Ukraine to allow civilians to evacuate to safety – something Moscow had not done before previous air attacks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov initially said Russia did not warn the United States about the upcoming launch of the new missile, noting that it was not obliged to do so. But he later changed tack and said Moscow gave a warning 30 minutes before the launch.

Putin’s statement came hours after Ukraine said Russia used an intercontinental ballistic missile in an attack on the Dnieper River that wounded two people and damaged an industrial facility and a rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, according to local officials. But U.S. officials said the initial U.S. assessment indicated the strike was carried out using an intermediate-range ballistic missile.

The attack came in a week of escalating tensions as the United States eased restrictions on Ukraine’s use of longer-range, American-made missiles inside Russia and Putin lowered the threshold for launching nuclear weapons.

The Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement that the attack on the Dnieper River was launched from Russia’s Astrakhan region on the Caspian Sea.

“Today our crazy neighbor once again showed who he really is,” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said hours before Putin’s speech. – And how afraid he is.

Russia sent a signal by attacking Ukraine with an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of firing multiple warheads at extremely high speeds, even if they are less accurate than cruise missiles or short-range ballistic missiles, said Matthew Saville, director of military science at the Royal United Services Institute. , a London think tank.

“Why can you use it?” – said Saville. “The alarm is an alarm for Ukrainians. We have things that outrage you. But in reality this is a signal to the West: “We are happy to enter the intermediate-range ballistic missile competition.” PS They may have a nuclear warhead. Do you really want to take that risk?”

Military experts say modern ICBMs and MRBMs are extremely difficult to intercept, although Ukraine has previously said it has stopped some other weapons that Russia has called “unstoppable,” including the Kinzhal hypersonic air-launched missile.

David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank, said he was “skeptical” of Putin’s claims, adding that Russian technology sometimes “fails.”

He suggested that Putin was “taunting the West, trying to bring it down… like a braggart boasting and mocking his enemy.”

Earlier this week, the Biden administration allowed Ukraine to use longer-range US-supplied missiles to strike deep into Russia, a move that drew an angry response from Moscow.

Days later, Ukraine fired several missiles at Russia, according to the Kremlin. That same day, Putin signed a new doctrine that allows for a potential nuclear response to even a conventional attack on Russia by any country backed by a nuclear power.

The doctrine is broadly worded to avoid a firm commitment to use nuclear weapons. In response, Western countries, including the United States, said Russia used irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and behavior throughout the war to intimidate Ukraine and other countries.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that Russia’s formal lowering of the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons did not lead to any changes in US doctrine.

She dismissed concerns that the decision to allow Ukraine to use Western missiles to strike deep into Russia could lead to an escalation of the war.

“They are the ones escalating the situation,” she said of the Kremlin, in part because of the flood of North Korean troops sent to the region.

More than 1,000 days after the war began, Russia is gaining the upper hand, with its larger army advancing in Donetsk and Ukrainian civilians suffering from relentless drone and missile strikes.

Analysts and observers say easing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western missiles is unlikely to change the course of the war, but it puts the Russian military in a more vulnerable position and could complicate logistics that are crucial to the war.

Putin also warned that the move would mean that Russia and NATO are at war.

“This is an important step and it contradicts, undermines the view that Putin has been trying to establish that it is okay for Russia to rain down Iranian drones and North Korean missiles on Ukraine, but it is a reckless escalation for Ukraine to use weapons supplied by the West. against legitimate targets in Russia,” said Peter Ricketts, a former British national security adviser who now sits in the House of Lords.

Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Emma Burrows in London and Zeke Miller and Lolita K. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.