LONDON: Ever since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has tried to deter the West from supplying Kyiv with ever more potent weaponry by threatening retaliation and escalation of the war. On each occasion – the supply of short-range missiles, tanks, F-16 fighter jets, longer-range missiles – Moscow’s bluff has been called.
This week the Kremlin finally followed through on its threat. Some 72 hours after the United States gave permission to Kyiv to use long-range US, UK and French missiles on targets inside Russia, Moscow hit back with a strike on Ukraine of the likes we have not seen before – the first combat use of what Kyiv called a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
In the early hours of Thursday (Nov 21), Russian forces struck Dnipro, in south central Ukraine, with what President Vladimir Putin called an experimental Oreshnik missile and Ukrainian officials identified as an RS-26 Rubezh ICBM. The RS-26 is a test missile based on another Russia ICBM, but with a much shorter range.
Although it is listed as an ICBM under the 2010 New Start nuclear arms treaty, some analysts have questioned whether the RS-26 qualifies as one and Western officials have hesitated to call it as such. Further muddying the waters, the Russian president described the Oreshnik as intermediate range.
Either way, and whatever the name, the attack was a message.
