Russia said a strike on Ukraine using an experimental new ballistic missile was a warning to the West as Kyiv called for an international response to a “severe escalation” by Moscow and Nato said its members would not be fazed by the attack.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said his forces had struck an arms factory in the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine on Thursday using a new medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile called “Oreshnik” after Ukraine hit targets in Russia for the first time using US Atacms ballistic missiles and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles.
“The main message is that the reckless decisions and actions of western countries that produce missiles, supply them to Ukraine, and subsequently take part in strikes on Russian territory cannot go unanswered by the Russian side,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
“The Russian side has clearly demonstrated its capabilities, and the contours of further retaliatory actions…have also been quite clearly outlined.”
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Kyiv has not confirmed Moscow’s claim that the missile hit a large weapons plant in Dnipro, but Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the attack “a clear and severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war”.
“This is already Russia’s second step toward escalation this year. The first was involving North Korea in the war against Ukraine with a contingent of at least 11,000 soldiers,” he said. “The world must respond. Right now there is no strong reaction from the world. Putin is very sensitive to this. He is testing you, dear partners…A lack of tough reactions to Russia’s actions sends a message that such behaviour is acceptable.”
There is disagreement between countries over which missile Russia fired at Dnipro, but all agree it was a weapon used for the first time in combat. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said it was a type of rocket called “Kedr” that has six warheads, each with six submunitions, which reached a speed of Mach 11 in the last stage of its trajectory.
The Nato-Ukraine council will meet next Tuesday to discuss the attack. Farah Dakhlallah, a spokeswoman for the military alliance, said: “Deploying this capability will neither change the course of the conflict nor deter Nato allies from supporting Ukraine.”
Security concerns increased this week in Kyiv, where the threat of missile strikes prompted the US and several European embassies to close for a day on Wednesday, and led the Ukrainian parliament to cancel a planned session on Friday.
Moscow’s deployment of a powerful new missile also stoked international fears that Europe’s biggest war since 1945 could expand and escalate further, after Russia’s all-out invasion of its pro-western neighbour passed the 1,000-day mark on Tuesday.
“None of us knows the end of this conflict, but we do know that it is currently taking on a very dramatic dimension,” said Polish prime minister Donald Tusk. “The events of the past several hours show that the threat of a global conflict is truly serious and real.”
US media reported that a senior North Korean general was injured in a Ukrainian missile strike on Russia’s Kursk border region this week, and Seoul said it believes Pyongyang has received arms from Moscow in exchange for providing troops, artillery shells and missiles.
South Korean national security adviser Shin Won-sik said Moscow was thought to have supplied its ally with air defence missiles and economic aid, and intends to help it with “satellite-related technologies”.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said on Thursday: “Never before have the warring parties on the Korean peninsula faced such a dangerous and acute confrontation that it could escalate into the most destructive thermonuclear war.”
