A damaged rehabilitation centre for people with disabilities in Dnipro, on Nov. 21.FLORENT VERGNES/AFP/Getty Images
Russia said it had attacked the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday with an experimental new ballistic missile, as Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the war for Ukraine was becoming a global one.
The attack, which Mr. Putin said was carried out using a hypersonic medium-range missile named “Oreshnik,” marked the latest in a series of dangerous escalations in the past few days alone. Though the missile was not equipped with a nuclear warhead, Mr. Putin suggested it would have been capable of carrying one.
The strike on Dnipro happened four days after outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden gave in to months of pressure and allowed the Ukrainian military to use Western-made long-range missiles to strike Russian territory. Ukraine has since used U.S.-manufactured ATACMS and British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles to attack targets hundreds of kilometres inside Russia.
“A regional Ukraine conflict instigated by the West has acquired elements of a global one, Mr. Putin said in an unscheduled television address on Thursday.
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On Tuesday, Mr. Putin signed revisions to his country’s nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons against Russia’s adversaries.
The changes allow for such weapons to be used in the event of an attack on Russia “by any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state.” Ukraine is a non-nuclear state that is receiving military assistance from three nuclear states: the U.S., Britain and France.
Mr. Putin had previously warned that allowing Ukraine to use Western-made missiles to strike Russia would be akin to the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization joining the war, since Russia says the Ukrainian military would need Western assistance to operate the targeting systems of the ATACMS and Storm Shadows.
“In response to the use of American and British long-range weaponry on November 21, the Russian Armed Forces conducted a combined strike on a Ukrainian defence industry facility,” Mr. Putin said Thursday.
“Among the operations carried out was the testing of one of Russia’s latest medium-range missile systems. In this case, a ballistic missile equipped with a non-nuclear hypersonic warhead was used,” he added, hinting that the U.S. and Britain could also be Russian targets.
“We consider ourselves justified in using our weapons against military targets in those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities. In the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond decisively and accordingly.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the weapons used to strike Dnipro – which had a prewar population of almost one million – resembled the kind of intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, designed to wipe out entire cities in the event of a nuclear war.
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Video taken by national police and shared with The Globe and Mail showed a series of six white flashes over Dnipro just after 5 a.m. local time, followed by a pair of large explosions.
“Today, it was a new Russian missile. Its speed and altitude suggest intercontinental ballistic capabilities. Investigations are ongoing,” Mr. Zelensky said in a video posted to social media. “It’s clear that Putin is using Ukraine as a testing ground. It’s also clear that he is terrified of normal life next to him. A life where people live with dignity. A country that wants to be free and has the right to be independent.”
Two senior Ukrainian officials told The Globe that the missile appeared to be similar to a RS-26 Rubezh, a long-range ballistic missile with capabilities that fall just outside the treaty that governs the use of ICBMs.
This combination of pictures published online by the Ukrainian charity "Come Back Alive" on November 21, 2024 shows flashes over the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.-/AFP/Getty Images
Ukraine’s air force said the missile was fired from the Astrakhan region of Russia, about 1,100 kilometres east of Dnipro.
The Globe is not naming the sources since they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed the new missile was based on Russia’s existing RS-26 Rubezh model.
“This was new type of lethal capability that was deployed on the battlefield, so that was certainly of concern,” Ms. Singh said, adding that the missile could carry either conventional or nuclear warheads. She said the U.S. had been notified ahead of the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels.
At a Thursday news conference in Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova made a show of taking a phone call mid-briefing. The voice on the other end of the line could be heard instructing her in Russian: “Masha, don’t comment at all on the ballistic missile strike on Yuzhmash that the Westerners have started talking about.”
Yuzhmash is the Soviet-era name for the Pivdenmash factory in Dnipro, which during the Cold War was a centre of production for many of the nuclear-armed missiles that ended up pointed at the West, as well as for space-going rockets. The plant has repeatedly been targeted by air strikes during Russia’s 33-month-long invasion of Ukraine.
At least two people were reportedly wounded in Thursday’s missile strike. Ukraine does not disclose military casualties.
During her Thursday press briefing, Ms. Zakharova warned that a new U.S. missile defence base in northern Poland represented another “provocative step” that “leads to undermining strategic stability, increasing strategic risks and, as a result, to an increase in the overall level of nuclear danger.”
Pawel Wronski, a spokesman for Poland’s Foreign Ministry, said that the base is purely defensive in nature and that Russia’s response to its opening underscored the need for the facility. “Such threats will certainly serve as an argument to strengthen Poland’s and NATO’s air defences,” he said.
On Wednesday, the U.S., Canada and other Western governments closed their embassies in Kyiv after the U.S. State Department warned that the Ukrainian capital could be the target of “a potential significant air attack.” The embassies were back open on Thursday.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said Russia’s announcement that it had used a ballistic missile in Ukraine showed the lengths that Mr. Putin will go to.
“I know there’s been a lot of rhetoric on the part of President Putin. We know that President Putin has no red lines,” she said during a news conference at the Canadian embassy in Washington. “And the best way to get to peace is for him to leave Ukraine.”