A fews hours ago, Ukraine’s air force claimed that Russia had attacked their country with an intercontinental ballistic missile, in what would be the first use of such a weapon in almost three years of war.
Asked afterwards whether Moscow fired the missile, which can hit targets thousands of kilometres away, Russia’s Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters he had “nothing to say on this topic”.
There’s still a lot that’s unclear about the exact nature of this morning’s attack, and some media are quoting an unnamed Western official casting doubt on Ukraine’s claim, suggesting it was a ballistic missile but not an intercontinental one.
Moscow had warned the U.S. and its NATO allies for months against granting Ukraine permission to fire Western missiles into Russia, and President Biden’s weekend decision to permit such strikes drew stark new warnings from lawmakers and Russian media close to President Vladimir Putin that the U.S. was escalating the nearly three-year conflict at the risk of sparking a new world war.
Eyes are turning to Ukraine’s staunch ally, the US: as the sun rises on the east coast, officials there may have more to say in the coming hours.
An unnamed US official says the missile fired at Ukraine overnight was a ballistic missile but not an intercontinental ballistic missile, according to CBS News.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson on Thursday said that reports Russia had used an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to attack Ukraine were deeply concerning, and would be another example of Russia’s recklessness if true.
If it’s true that Russia has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile at Ukraine, this would be the first time such a missile was used in combat – not just in this war, but in history.
Officials in Moscow have long threatened to respond to sophisticated Western missiles being used against targets in Russia, and this could be the response.
The message to the West would be: we have missiles that can strike anywhere in the world, and they can carry nuclear weapons.It appears, however, that whatever weapons were used against Dnipro this morning were conventional, rather than nuclear.
And this is key in determining Ukraine’s and the West’s response – it’s likely to be more of what we have seen so far: condemnation and continued drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.
But Moscow’s apparent readiness to use a new, longer range and more powerful missile in the war is bad news for Ukraine.