Putin says Russia hit Ukraine with a new ballistic missile called the Oreshnik amid confusion over latest strike

A Russian ICBM on display during a military parade in Moscow.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow struck Ukraine with a new medium-range ballistic missile on Thursday after Kyiv said it had been hit by an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Putin said that his military fired a ballistic missile with a “non-nuclear hypersonic warhead” at Ukraine, according to media reports on his remarks. The Russian leader characterized the strike as a “test” and said that there is no way to counter this weapon.

He said that the attack with the new weapon, which he identified as the “Oreshnik,” was executed in response to Ukraine’s use of American and British missiles in strikes on Russian soil earlier in the week.

“The combat testing of the Oreshnik missile system is being conducted by us in response to NATO’s aggressive actions against Russia,” Putin said.

A still from a video, shared by the Ukrainian military, of ATACMS in use by Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military said earlier on Thursday that Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile at the country, marking the first time an ICBM had ever been used in combat.

The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia launched the ICBM at the centrally located city of Dnipro from its southeastern Astrakhan region, several hundred miles away. Kyiv’s Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security said it’s the “first time in history” that this weapon was fired in a war.

Some Western officials pushed back on the claims, asserting that Russia had launched a ballistic missile but not an ICBM.

There was some early speculation that the Russian missile launched at Ukraine might have been an RS-26, an ICBM in name but an intermediate-range ballistic missile in application.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the missile that struck Dnipro as “new,” explaining that its speed and altitude matched those of an ICBM. He said the Kremlin is using Ukraine as “a testing ground.”

Firefighters work at the site of a Russian missile strike in Dnipro, Ukraine on November 21.

Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, said that “we’re awaiting expert conclusions to determine the exact type of new missile that Russia fired at Ukraine this morning, which had all flight characteristics of an ICBM.”

An ICBM is a ballistic missile that is generally considered to have a range of over 3,400 miles. It is fired into space from silos or road-mobile transporter erector launchers. Some carry multiple independent re-entry vehicles with separate warheads for greater devastation. The weapon is primarily strategic and intended for the delivery of a nuclear payload.

Video footage said to be from the Dnipro attack shows multiple objects impacting the ground, though there do not appear to be any visible explosions. Some expert observers have said the warheads may have been inert.

From this video of last night’s Russian it seems HIGHLY LIKELY that Russia did in fact use an RS-26 ICBM without a nuclear payload to strike Dnipro.

The video shows what appear to be MIRV impacts that are too simultaneous to be multiple independent ballistic missiles. pic.twitter.com/DIwGVLQPlo

— Oliver Alexander (@OAlexanderDK) November 21, 2024

Western officials told multiple outlets that Russia launched a ballistic missile but not an ICBM. Some said it was likely a shorter-range IRBM instead. A Pentagon official told B-17 that the US is looking into the situation.

As questions swirled, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry was told during a press briefing not to discuss the strike in a moment that has since spread on social media.

‼ Russia’s MFA press-alchaché Maria Zakharova received a call from the higher-ups during a briefing, ordering her not to comment on Russia’s strike on Ukraine with an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The conversation can be heard in the microphone. Absolutely brilliant. pic.twitter.com/Iv6kHHaxTK

— Maria Drutska 🇺🇦 (@maria_drutska) November 21, 2024

Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, said in a social media thread that the “intercontinental” claims should be approached with skepticism and caution.

“Using these kinds of missiles, whether RS-26 or a true ICBM, in a conventional role does not make a lot of sense because of their relatively low accuracy and high cost,” he said. “But this kind of a strike might have a value as a signal.”

As for what that signal might be, Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at the Oslo Nuclear Project, said that the fact that the missile appeared to carry a MIRVed payload “is much more significant for signaling purposes and is the reason Russia opted for it. This payload is exclusively associated with nuclear-capable missiles.”

Those assessments were made prior to Putin’s announcement about the weapons used.

Emergency workers in Dnipro after the Russian missile strike.

Thursday’s missile attack marks a significant moment in the conflict, which just passed the 1,000-day mark and came amid a series of significant developments in the war.

The US last weekend loosened restrictions on Ukraine’s use of longer-range Western missiles to strike targets inside Russia, and Kyiv has since used American-made ballistic missiles and British-made cruise missiles to strike across the border for the first time.

Putin said these attacks prompted Thursday’s strike. Meanwhile, the Russian leader this week approved an update to the country’s nuclear doctrine. The move seemed to directly respond to the Western missile policy reversal.