Russia launches an intercontinental missile over Ukraine for the first time, according to Kiev officials International

This Thursday, Kiev accused Moscow for the first time of firing an intercontinental ballistic missile against its territory. The Ukrainian Air Force has reported that Russia launched the rocket between five and seven in the morning this Thursday from the Astrakhan region, southeast of Volgograd, bordering the Caspian Sea. Kiev has not reported the type of rocket launched, although some Ukrainian media warned on the eve of the imminent launch of the RS-26 Rubezh, a new generation of Russian ballistic missiles. The show of force came two days after Ukraine used American ATACMS missiles on Russian soil for the first time.

The Russian attack included the firing of a Kinzhal hypersonic missile by a fighter from the Tambov region and seven Kh-101 cruise missiles launched from Tupolev strategic bombers. The Ukrainian military reported downing six of the Kh-101s launched by Moscow during the same attack, while the impact of the remaining weapons “had no significant consequences.” According to Kiev, the Russian military’s target was “businesses and critical infrastructure in the city of Dnipro in the country’s central-east.”

Local officials are trying to clarify whether there were any casualties during the bombing. “So far we know about damage to an industrial company in Dnipro and that there were also two fires in the city,” Serhiy Lysak, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional state administration, published on Telegram.

According to the newspaper, the attack has forced the Ukrainian government to cut power to the regions of Kiev, Dnipro, Odessa, Sumy, Zhytomyr and Donetsk in order to balance the power supply. Kyiv postThe newspaper claims that the missiles fired by the attackers entered Ukrainian airspace from the north of the country and then turned to the southeast.

Ukrainian media had speculated on the eve of the attack that Moscow would test-fire its RS-26 Rubez intercontinental missile, one of the pillars of the new Russian nuclear triad. This includes the Kinzhal, capable of carrying nuclear and conventional ammunition, which has already been extensively tested in the Ukrainian war. The RS-26 Rubaz has a strike range of up to 6,000 km and is capable of carrying a warhead of 1.2 tonnes.

Several European countries, including the United States and Spain, announced on Wednesday the closure of their embassies in Ukraine due to possible retaliation by Russia for the use of Western missiles against military targets on their territory. After receiving authorization from the White House, Ukrainian forces fired US ATACMS missiles at an arsenal in the Bryansk region on Tuesday, and a day later launched other Storm Shadow missiles against Russian military targets in the Kursk province.

Ukraine had received these missiles long ago, but the Joe Biden administration was against Kiev using them inside Russian territory. Until this week, when he changed his mind. The Democratic government feared that the situation would escalate if Ukrainian forces attacked protected Russian bases and airfields from the rear, but Republican Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election has prompted the White House to wait until its investiture in Kiev in January. Have been forced to allow the use of weapons. ,

Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently silent. Yes, they have spoken with their actions: last Tuesday the President signed the decree by which the new Russian nuclear doctrine came into force, which envisages the use of nuclear deterrence not only in the event that the Russian state as a whole is under threat. Be in. But even if its sovereignty or territory is threatened. Furthermore, the document also emphasizes that Moscow will consider a nuclear power an aggressor if it provides weapons to an “aggressor” state – even if conventional – that does not possess weapons of mass destruction.