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Kremlin says hypersonic missile strike on Ukraine was a warning to the west
The Kremlin said on Friday that a strike on Ukraine using a newly developed hypersonic ballistic missile was designed to warn the west that Moscow will respond to moves by the US and the UK to let Kyiv strike Russia with their missiles.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, was speaking a day after Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Moscow had fired the new missile – the Oreshnik or ‘hazel tree’- at a Ukrainian military facility.
Peskov said Russia had not been obliged to warn the US about the strike, but had informed the US 30 minutes before the launch anyway. Putin remained open to dialogue, Peskov said.
Key events
The United States believes Russia fired a never-before-fielded intermediate-range ballistic missile on Thursday in its attack on Ukraine, an escalation that analysts say could have implications for European missile defences.
Here’s what we know so far about the missile:
The US military said the Russian missile’s design was based on the design of Russia’s longer-range RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The new missile was experimental and Russia likely possessed only a handful of them, officials said.
The Pentagon said the missile was fired with a conventional warhead but that Moscow could modify it if it wanted.
“It could be refitted to certainly carry different types of conventional or nuclear warheads,” Pentagon spokesperson, Sabrina Singh, said.
Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had earlier hinted that Russia would complete the development of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) system after Washington and Berlin agreed to deploy long-range US missiles in Germany from 2026.
“The RS-26 was always [a] prime candidate,” Lewis said.
Singh said the new variant of the missile was considered “experimental” by the Pentagon. “It’s the first time that we’ve seen it employed on the battlefield … So that’s why we consider it experimental.”
US and UK sources indicated that they believed the missile fired on Dnipro was an experimental nuclear-capable, IRBM, which has a theoretical range of below 3,420 miles (5,500km). That is enough to reach Europe from where it was fired in south-western Russia, but not the US.
Justin McCurry
Russia has sent air-defence missiles and other military technology to North Korea in return for the deployment of its troops to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, intelligence officials in South Korea have said.
In a TV interview on Friday, South Korea’s top security adviser, Shin Won-sik, suggested the Kremlin had started to fulfil its side of a deal to provide the regime in Pyongyang with technology and aid as “payment” for the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to Ukraine.
“It has been identified that equipment and anti-aircraft missiles aimed at reinforcing Pyongyang’s vulnerable air-defence system have been delivered to North Korea,” Shin, the national security adviser to the South’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, told the broadcaster SBS.
Shin did not offer details of how intelligence officials had confirmed the arrival in North Korea of Russian military support, and North Korea and the Kremlin have not commented on his claims.
North Korea had also received “various forms of economic support” and may have acquired Russian technology for its troubled spy satellite programme, Shin said.
North Korea claimed it had put its first spy satellite into orbit in November last year after two failed attempts, but experts have questioned whether it is able to produce imagery that could be useful to the country’s military. Another satellite launch in May also ended in failure.
Experts believe North Korea agreed to send troops to the western Kursk border region in return for military technology, ranging from surveillance satellites to submarines, as well as possible security guarantees from Moscow.
When they met in Pyongyang in June, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a mutual aid agreement that obliged both countries to provide military assistance “without delay” in the case of an attack on the other.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) has spoken to a resident of Dnipro after Russia’s first launch of a nuclear-capable mid-range ballistic missile at the city of on Thursday.
Vladimir Riga, 66, was on his way to work when he saw “an explosion”. He said the attack damaged a rehabilitation centre and AFP saw workers boarding up the windows of the damaged building after the attack.
Asked if it marked a new turn in the conflict and if he feared an escalation, Riga said, “of course I am afraid. Anything can happen”.
New US sanctions on Moscow may shut down the only way European customers can pay for Russian gas, increase volatility on Russia’s FX market and push Moscow closer to Beijing’s orbit, Russian economists said on Friday, reports Reuters.
Washington imposed new sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank on Thursday that prevent the state-controlled lender from handling any new energy-related transactions that touch the US financial system. The US also targeted about 50 other Russian banks and the Bank of Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS).
Hungary and Slovakia, both of which have long-term contracts with Russian energy company Gazprom, are studying the changes, according to Reuters. Russian deputy energy minister, Pavel Sorokin, declined to comment when asked by Reuters if Gazprombank would continue receiving payments from European clients.
“EU payments for energy resources through Gazprombank will likely become impossible at the end of 2024,” Sinara Investment Bank analysts said, according to Reuters.
The sanctions included a wind-down period for transactions involving Gazprombank until 20 December and for those related to the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Russia’s far east until 28 June 2025.
The Kremlin said on Friday the sanctions were an attempt by Washington to hinder Russian gas exports, but a solution would be found. Gazprombank said the sanctions would not impact its banking operations, but did not respond to Reuter’s questions on gas payment solutions.
In March 2022, Moscow demanded that countries hostile to Russia pay for gas supplies under a scheme that involves the conversion of hard currency into roubles. Buyers could open two accounts at Gazprombank, one in roubles and one in foreign currency.
Now, they will need to find another intermediary.
The US has authorised transactions related to energy with certain exceptions for a dozen Russian financial institutions until 30 April 2025. Some analysts say Gazprombank could be added to that list, reports Reuters.
Sweden will not be intimidated by Russia’s provocations, defence minister Pal Jonson has said after president Vladimir Putin hinted at strikes on Western countries supplying weapons to Ukraine.
Jonson told reporters at a joint press conference in Stockholm with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov:
The Russian escalation and provocation that we’ve been noticing recently is an attempt to scare us from supporting Ukraine, and that will fail. This will not happen.
Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Novodmytrivka in eastern Ukraine‘s Donetsk region, the RIA state-owned news agency reported on Friday, citing the Defence Ministry.
The claim has not been independently verified.
In an intelligence update, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said the key development that had changed the nature of the conflict to Ukraine‘s advantage had been Kyiv’s deployment of drones against military targets in Russia.
Over 1,000 days into the conflict, Russia’s Aerospace Forces, despite technological and numerical advantage have failed to gain air superiority over Ukraine.
In mid and late September Ukraine struck four Russian strategic ammunition depots hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine. The total tonnage of ammunition destroyed across the sites represents the largest loss of Russian and North Korean supplied ammunition during the war.
The attacks again highlight Russia’s inability to protect strategic military sites from Ukrainian UAV (Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle) attack.
Here are some of the latest images coming through from Ukraine and Russia:
Meanwhile, the UK’s foreign secretary has vowed to continue to “do everything that is necessary” to help Ukraine combat Russia.
David Lammy and his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot wrote in the i newspaper promising to continue to support Ukraine and put the country “in the best position to achieve a just and lasting peace”.
The two said:
By launching his illegal and unprovoked full-scale war of aggression in Ukraine 1,000 days ago this week, not only did Vladimir Putin accelerate the largest war on the European continent since the Second World War, he also sought to rewrite the international order.
The annihilation of the global architecture that has been the cornerstone of international peace and security for generations. All to justify his illegal and intolerable aggression against a sovereign European country.
The UK and France will not let him do so. Together with our allies, we will do everything that is necessary to put Ukraine in the best position to achieve a just and lasting peace.
The UK home secretary has said that “we will continue” to see “aggressive language” from Vladimir Putin after the Russian leader threatened to strike the UK, reports the PA news agency.
Yvette Cooper told Sky News that there has been an “aggressive, blustering tone” from Putin throughout the conflict, which she called “completely unacceptable”.
On Thursday, Russia used a new ballistic missile in Ukraine, which Putin said was in response to the UK and US allowing missiles they have supplied to Ukraine to be used to strike targets in Russia.
In a televised address, Putin said:
We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”
Asked about the Russian leader’s threat to use weapons against nations that allow their own weapons to be used against Russia, Cooper told Sky News:
Russia invaded a sovereign state.
We have seen the aggressive, blustering tone and response from Putin all the way through this, it’s completely unacceptable, and we will continue to see that sort of aggressive language.
We are clear that that sort of behaviour cannot be tolerated, and that’s why we have provided the support to Ukraine as they defend themselves against Putin’s aggression.”
As with other government ministers, Cooper also declined to confirm officially whether UK weapons had been used by Ukraine in Russia, saying:
I’m not going to comment on the detail of any individual defence operations.”
The UK is believed to have allowed its Storm Shadow missiles to be used by Ukrainian forces within the Kursk region of Russia, while the US has given permission for its Atacms weapons to be fired at targets in Russia
Putin confirmed Russia has tested the new intermediate-range weapon in an attack on Dnipro in response.
Recent events show that there is a real risk of a global conflict breaking out, Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Friday, after Russia fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian city.
“The war in the east is entering a decisive phase, we feel that the unknown is approaching,” Tusk told a teachers conference, reports Reuters.
Tusk added:
The conflict is taking on dramatic proportions. The last few dozen hours have shown that the threat is serious and real when it comes to global conflict.”
Poland, which borders Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, has been a leading voice calling for members of Nato to spend more on defence, and is itself allocating 4.7% of gross domestic product (GDP) to boosting its armed forces in 2025.
Russia said on Thursday that a new US ballistic missile defence base in northern Poland will lead to an increase in the overall level of nuclear danger, but Warsaw said “threats” from Moscow only strengthened the argument for Nato defences.
Kremlin says hypersonic missile strike on Ukraine was a warning to the west
The Kremlin said on Friday that a strike on Ukraine using a newly developed hypersonic ballistic missile was designed to warn the west that Moscow will respond to moves by the US and the UK to let Kyiv strike Russia with their missiles.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, was speaking a day after Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Moscow had fired the new missile – the Oreshnik or ‘hazel tree’- at a Ukrainian military facility.
Peskov said Russia had not been obliged to warn the US about the strike, but had informed the US 30 minutes before the launch anyway. Putin remained open to dialogue, Peskov said.
Ukraine parliament scraps session over Russian missile strike threat
Ukraine’s parliament has cancelled Friday’s session, lawmakers said, citing the risk of a Russian missile attack on the district of Kyiv where government buildings are located.
“The hour of questions to the government has been cancelled,” Yevgenia Kravchuk, an MP from the ruling party told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Kravchuk said:
There are signals of an increased risk of attacks on the government district in the coming days.”
Andrew Roth
Like Chekhov’s gun coming off the wall in Act V, it was probably only a matter of time before Vladimir Putin launched an experimental, nuclear-capable ballistic missile into Ukraine. It is hardly a coincidence that his decision comes as the war approaches a likely endgame, with both sides jockeying for position ahead of negotiations in the shadow of Donald Trump.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia quite knows what Trump will do when he takes office in January. But the escalations taking place now will set a new status quo for the day he becomes president, at which point Trump’s options range from hard-nosed horse-trading to simply throwing Ukraine under the bus.
Ukrainian officials said this week that they simply do not know what the president-elect has planned for them. And with little idea of Trump’s intentions, they are focused on optimizing their battlefield position, seeking to hold a beachhead in Russia’s Kursk region and shore up the frontlines elsewhere across the battlefield to be in as strong a position as possible before the new US administration.
US officials, similarly unsure of what their new president will do, are keen to make Ukraine as self-sufficient as possible and to prepare their European partners to increase support to Ukraine after Biden’s departure. One way some of his administration officials have described the goal is to avoid handing Trump another Afghanistan, where the country’s military collapses as soon as US ceases to provide support. Most are pessimistic that Ukraine can continue the fight indefinitely, however.
In the final months of his term, Joe Biden offered Ukraine one thing it has been clamoring for: the right to use Atacms long-range missiles against targets inside Russia. He has also given Ukraine authorisation to use landmines and the right to send US military contractors in to fix the hardware Ukraine needs to stay in the fight.
Russian forces have “derailed” Ukraine’s entire military strategy for next year, Moscow’s defence minister said on Friday, after Russia struck Ukraine with an experimental hypersonic missile, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, announced the launch of the missile in a surprise address on Thursday, saying the conflict in Ukraine had taken on a “global” nature. The Kremlin leader also warned that Moscow felt “entitled” to hit military facilities in countries that allow Ukraine to use their weapons against Russia.
In a meeting with military commanders, Russian defence minister, Andrei Belousov, said Moscow’s advance had “accelerated” in Ukraine and “ground down” Kyiv’s best units. “We have, in fact, derailed the entire 2025 campaign,” Belousov said of the Ukrainian army, speaking in a video published by the Russian defence ministry, reports AFP.
Russian troops have been making steady advances in eastern Ukraine for months, capturing a string of small towns and villages because overstretched Ukrainian soldiers lack manpower and artillery.
Ukraine recently fired US and UK supplied longer-range missiles at Russian territory for the first time, ramping up already sky-high tensions over the conflict, which is nearly in its third year.
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has called for a strong response from world leaders to Russia’s use of the new missile, which he said proved Moscow “does not want peace”.
