Following a week of increasing threats against the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that a newly built ballistic missile fired into Ukraine earlier in the week could not be intercepted.
According to Reuters, Putin stated in broadcast remarks, “There is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it.” And let me reiterate that we will keep testing this most recent system. Establishing serial production is essential.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, had earlier claimed that Ukraine’s use of the hypersonic Oreshnik missile was a warning to its careless Western partners.
In reaction to Ukraine’s first use of long-range Western weaponry to strike targets within Russia, Putin claimed on Thursday that he had ordered a strike using the new intermediate-range ballistic missile.
The United States and its European allies have pledged not to let Moscow’s use of the new weapon, which had multiple warheads, dissuade them from supporting Kyiv.
Meanwhile, more information regarding the growing partnership between Pyongyang and Moscow was coming to light. Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, accused Washington of inflaming tensions and threatened his own nuclear neighbor, which the United States supports, in the south.
The most recent round of saber rattling between Kim and Putin has occurred during a week when the war in Ukraine has reached the 1,000-day mark and Washington is getting ready for a leadership transition.
Western officials and commentators, however, have attempted to downplay what they described as an attempt to scare Kyiv and its supporters.
The use of the new missile on the eastern city of Dnipro was denounced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “severe escalation.” In order to combat any new threats, he further declared that Ukraine was meeting with its “partners” to discuss new air defense systems.
He claimed that the Russian missile assault on Thursday was the second significant step toward escalation following the deployment of over 10,000 North Korean troops by the Kremlin.
Kim warned Friday that his region has never been more at risk of “the most destructive thermonuclear war,” as reported by the state news agency KCNA, because of U.S. hostility.
The decision by Washington and its allies to loosen sanctions on Kyiv was probably influenced by the Kim-Putin partnership. And in response to Putin’s warnings, NATO, the Western military alliance preparing for a second Donald Trump administration, declared it will not halt such backing.
According to alliance spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah, using this option won’t alter the direction of the fight or discourage NATO partners from standing by Ukraine.
According to a U.S. official, Biden administration officials recently briefed Ukraine and other allies to assist them get ready for Russia’s potential use of the new weapon.
The U.S. official stated that although Russia may be attempting to exploit this capability to try to scare Ukraine and its supporters or garner attention in the information domain, it will not be a game changer in this battle.
Following months of persuasion during which it faced escalating Russian air and ground attacks, Ukraine used long-range Western weapons to target Russian territory.
Due to the growing fear of a missile assault on the region housing government facilities, the Ukrainian Parliament canceled a session on Friday and limited staff presence, indicating the danger experienced on the ground, according to the nation’s state television.
Andrei Beluosov, the Russian Defense Minister, claimed that his troops had accelerated their advance and interfered with the Ukrainian military’s plans for the coming year.
Beluosov claimed that Ukraine’s finest units were destroyed here and that “the advancement [of the Russian Armed Forces] has accelerated” while visiting a command post of the nation’s northern military, which was the target of a Ukrainian strike using British Storm Shadow long-range missiles in the Kursk border region.
The visit’s date and location were not disclosed by the Russian Defense Ministry, which published the remarks on Friday.
Increasing Russian threats did not convince Andrey Baklitskiy, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva.
He said it was obvious that Russia felt compelled to react to Ukraine’s transgression of its red lines. However, following the launch of the new missile, he told NBC News over the phone on Friday that it is “unclear what this is adding to Russian capabilities.”
Baklitskiy stated that although the new missile carried several warheads, it was unclear how accurate they were.
The Oreshnik, also known as the Hazel tree, is a new experimental missile type that the United States claims is based on the design of the current RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile.
At first, Kyiv said Russia had shot an ICBM.
Baklitskiy added that the weapon would probably be “quite expensive,” meaning the Kremlin could not use it on a daily basis.
Baklitsky acknowledged that the attack still served as a thinly veiled threat that it might one day detonate a nuclear payload, but he cautioned that Russia informed U.S. officials about the attack through nuclear risk reduction communication channels, citing indications that the Kremlin was still keen to prevent a major escalation.
“You are responding with something you haven t used before,” he stated. “But then it s not escalatory in the sense of things getting out of hand.”
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