The intermediate-range missile did not carry nuclear weapons, but it is part of a strategic arsenal that is capable of delivering them.
President Vladimir V. Putin escalated a tense showdown with the West on Thursday, saying that Russia had launched a new intermediate-range ballistic missile at Ukraine in response to Ukraine’s recent use of American and British weapons to strike deeper into Russia.
In what appeared to be an ominous threat against Ukraine’s western allies, Mr. Putin also asserted that Russia had the right to strike the military facilities of countries “that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”
His warning came hours after Russia’s military fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile at Ukraine that Western officials and analysts said was meant to instill fear in Kyiv and the West. Though the missile carried only conventional warheads, using it signaled that Russia could strike with nuclear weapons if it chooses.
“The regional conflict in Ukraine, previously provoked by the West, has acquired elements of a global character,” Mr. Putin said in a rare address to the nation. “We are developing intermediate- and shorter-range missiles as a response to U.S. plans to produce and deploy intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.”
Mr. Putin has frequently wielded the threat of nuclear weapons to try to keep the West off balance and stem the flow of support to Ukraine. But sending an intermediate-range missile with nuclear capabilities into Ukraine and brandishing the strike as a threat to the West ratcheted up tensions even further.
Sounding by turns boastful and threatening, Mr. Putin called Thursday’s missile strike a successful “test” of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile called the Oreshnik. And he made clear that the attack on Ukraine was in response to a recent decision by the Biden Administration to grant Ukraine permission to use American-made ATACMS ballistic missiles to hit targets inside Russia.
Ukraine used ATACMS and the British Storm Shadow missile against Russia for the first time this week, Ukrainian and Western officials said.
Since Mr. Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in February 2022 — and Ukraine’s western allies began supplying Kyiv with weapons and other support — both Russia and the West have taken pains to avoid a direct confrontation that all sides agreed could lead to a disastrous military conflict, and possibly nuclear war.
But as the war in Ukraine approaches the end of its third year, the guardrails preventing such a confrontation appear to be under strain like never before.
“This is an escalation,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “I really believe the situation is very dangerous.”
In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said, “Putin is the only one who started this war, a completely unprovoked war, and who is doing everything to keep the war going for more than a thousand days.”
He called the missile strike “yet another proof that Russia definitely does not want peace.”
The use of an intermediate-range missile drawn from Russia’s strategic arsenal was notable, Ukrainian and Western officials said. The target inside Ukraine was well within the range of the conventional weapons that Moscow has routinely used throughout the war.
But this time, Russia launched a longer-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads that is mainly intended as nuclear deterrence; that choice, the officials and military analysts said, signals a warning aimed at striking fear into Kyiv and its allies.
Fabian Rene Hoffmann, a weapons expert at the University of Oslo, said that from a Russian perspective, “what they would like to tell us today is that ‘Look, last night’s strike was nonnuclear in payload, but, you know, if whatever you do continues, the next strike might be with a nuclear warhead.’”
There was initially debate on Thursday over exactly what Russia fired at Ukraine. Ukraine’s air force along with Mr. Zelensky initially claimed it was an intercontinental ballistic missile, a weapon capable of hitting targets thousands of miles away, including in the United States. Ukrainian officials said the missile struck a military facility in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, though the extent of the damage was not immediately clear.
Senior U.S. officials and a Ukrainian official, however, said the weapon appeared to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile, not an ICBM.
Dimitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said that under protocol, Russia was not required to notify the American side in advance of the missile launch because the Oreshnik is not an intercontinental missile. But an automatic notification to the U.S. was triggered 30 minutes before the launch, Mr. Peskov told Tass, the Russian state media outlet.
The U.S. Department of Defense confirmed that it received that warning.
In a statement on Thursday, the National Security Council in the U.S. said that Russia launched what it called “an experimental medium-range ballistic missile against Ukraine.” The statement said Russia likely had “only a handful” of these missiles and had likely used it to try to “intimidate Ukraine and its supporters.”
The Ukrainian Air Force said the missile was launched from the Russian region of Astrakhan. Ivan Kyrychevskyi, a military analyst with Defense Express, a Ukrainian consulting agency, said the launch area suggested it was fired from a truck based at the Kapustin Yar training range — a Cold War-era testing ground for Soviet ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and other weaponry, underscoring the threat intended with the launch.
Ukraine has no radars capable of detecting such missiles in flight through the upper atmosphere, nor does it have air defense systems capable of shooting them down, Mr. Kyrychevskyi said. “Our Western partners might have seen this launch before us,” he said.
Analysts said the name Mr. Putin gave for the new weapon, Oreshnik, appeared new, but that the weapon itself was likely not much different from known versions of Russian intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Although other Russian missiles that have been launched into Ukraine can also carry nuclear weapons — like the Iskander and the Kh-101 — what makes the intermediate-range missile alarming, in addition to its range, is its ability to fire multiple nuclear warheads when it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere, said Tom Karako, director of the missile defense project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
That makes it difficult, if not nearly impossible, to intercept them. The missiles are also large and can fly far, high and fast, reaching hypersonic speed.
It represents “a nuclear saber-rattling for both Ukraine and Europe itself,” Mr. Karako said. “It’s a pretty sharp signal.”
Roman Kostenko, the chairman of the defense and intelligence committee in Ukraine’s Parliament, said that Thursday’s attack would not prompt Ukraine to alter how it is fighting the war, including striking back at targets in Russia in self-defense.
But Ukraine halted its nuclear missile production after gaining independence in 1991, and now, Col. Kostenko said, “we have nothing to answer to this class of weapons.”
If there was any doubt about Russia’s intent, Mr. Putin laid out the threat explicitly.
“We have always preferred — and are still ready — to resolve all contentious issues by peaceful means,” he said. “But we are also ready for any development. If anyone still doubts this, it is in vain. There will always be a response.”
On top of everything else, Russian and Western officials have sparred over who is to blame for the recent spate of escalation. While the Kremlin blames Washington for granting Ukraine permission to strike Russian targets with Western weapons, the White House has said Russia’s own actions brought about the decision, specifically citing Russian’s decision to invite thousands of North Korean troops to help dislodge a Ukrainian occupation of part of Russia’s Kursk region.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Thursday that “the escalation at every turn, at every step, is coming from Russia.”
She repeated the White House’s position that the decision to bring North Korean troops into the conflict was the important escalatory action, and that changes in policy about U.S. weapons were not. “This is their aggression: not Ukraine’s, not ours,” she said.
In Dnipro, at the site of Thursday’s missile strike, officials were still evaluating the extent of the damage of the missile strikes, though it did not appear to be extensive. The city’s mayor, Borys Filatov, wrote on Facebook that an explosion had broken windows at a rehabilitation center for disabled people.
The Ukrainian government does not provide damage assessments of attacks directed at strategic military assets, but local residents suggested the PA Pivdenmash Machine-Building Plant was struck. The precise work that now takes place at the plant is a closely guarded secret, but its history as a missile producer in the Cold War is well known, making it a frequent target for attacks throughout the war.
