Ukraine-Russia latest: Putin says new hypersonic medium-range missile launched on Ukraine after ICBM claim
Russian strikes come after Ukraine uses UK and US-supplied long-range missiles to hit targets within Russia for first time
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Your support makes all the difference.Vladimir Putin has said that Russia used a new hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile to attack a Ukrainian military facility, in what the Russian president claimed was a warning to Western nations arming Kyiv.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier accused Mr Putin’s forces of using his country as a missile testing ground, after he warned that Russia had struck Dnipro with a missile “matching the speed and altitude” of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
While that would have marked the first time Moscow had used such missiles in Ukraine, Mr Putin said later on Thursday in a nationwide TV address that Russia had actually conducted combat tests of the mid-range “Oreshnik” hypersonic missile system.
With tensions escalating, Mr Putin said the Oreshnik had been fired in response to the aggressive actions of Nato countries, after Ukraine used US and British-made long-range missiles to strike targets on internationally recognised Russian territory for the first time this week.
Following Thursday’s strike, Mr Putin sought to threaten Kyiv’s allies by claiming that Moscow could hit the military installations of any country whose weapons were used against Russia.
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How could the war in Ukraine escalate?
The latest suspected ICBM strikes come after the war has taken on a growing international dimension with the arrival of North Korean troops to help Russia on the battlefield — a development that officials said prompted US President Joe Biden’s policy shift on allowing Ukraine to fire longer-range US missiles into Russia.
The attack comes two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a revised nuclear doctrine that formally lowers the threshold for the country’s use of nuclear weapons.
Putin has previously warned the US and other NATO allies that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied longer-range weapons to hit Russian territory would mean that Russia and NATO are at war.
And the new doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.
While the doctrine envisions a possible nuclear response by Russia to a conventional strike, it is formulated broadly to avoid a firm commitment to use nuclear weapons and keep Putin’s options open.
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