WASHINGTON — An investigation by the American intelligence services has shown that Russia may make use of this deadly new intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine in “the coming days,” a U.S. official said Wednesday.
The experimental Oreshnik missile is seen by U.S. officials more as an attempt at intimidation than as a game-changer on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.
The official said Russia has only a handful of missiles and they have a smaller warhead than other missiles that Russia has regularly launched at Ukraine.
Russia first fired the weapon on November 21 missile attack against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Surveillance camera footage of the attack showed huge fireballs piercing the darkness and crashing into the ground with astonishing speed.
Within hours of the attack on the military facility, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the rare step of speaking on national television and boasting about the new hypersonic missile. He warned the West that its next use could be against Ukraine’s NATO allies, who allowed Kiev to use their longer-range missiles to attack inside Russia.
The attack came two days after Putin signed a revised version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. The doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response from Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any country backed by a nuclear power.
That attack also came shortly after President Joe Biden agreed to ease restrictions on Ukraine’s use of longer-range U.S. weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory.
“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities of the countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” Putin said at the time.
The Pentagon said the Oreshnik was an experimental type of intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) based on the Russian RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The attack marked the first time such a weapon had been used in war.
Medium-range missiles can fly between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,400 miles). Such weapons were banned under a Soviet-era treaty that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019.
In the meantime, Donald Trump Urges Putin to take action to reach an immediate ceasefire with Ukraine, describing this as part of his active efforts as President-elect to put an end to the war.
“Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” Trump wrote on social media last weekend, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.