Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia fired a new hypersonic ballistic missile at a Ukrainian military factory in Dnipro in response to US and British long-range missiles being fired into Russian territory.
“There was, among other things, a combat-conditions test of one of Russia’s newest intermediate-range missile systems. In this case it was a ballistic missile in a non-nuclear hypersonic version,” Putin said, according to TASS.
The missile, codenamed Oreshnik, would have been banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the US withdrew from in 2019. “We believe that the United States made a mistake by unilaterally destroying the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019 under a far-fetched pretext,” Putin said.
Ukrainian officials initially claimed Russia fired an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) into Dnipro, but that was quickly contradicted by US and other Western officials. The Pentagon later said the new missile was based on Russia’s Rubezh ICBM model and that Russia notified the US before the launch, which was confirmed by the Kremlin.
Russia’s use of its new missile came after Ukraine launched US ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles into Russian territory. The escalation came after President Biden authorized Ukraine to use the longer-range missiles, which require direct NATO support to be fired. Biden took the step despite clear warnings from Russia that the escalation would risk nuclear war and World War III.
Putin said the ATACMS attack did not result in any serious damage, but the Storm Shadows attack hit a military command point, resulting in deaths and injuries. He warned the NATO-supported strikes could turn the Ukraine war into a “global” conflict.
“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” Putin said. “If anyone else doubts this, then they are wrong – there will always be a response.”
In response to Biden authorizing the long-range strikes on Russian territory, Putin formally changed Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which now considers an attack by a non-nuclear armed state that’s supported by a nuclear-armed power as a joint attack. The doctrine allows the use of nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack against Russia or Belarus if it is deemed a critical threat to Russia’s sovereignty.