His comments come after a new weapon was used to hit targets in Ukraine
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that an attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday morning was carried out using ‘a new conventional intermediate-range missile’.
Putin claims that the missile, codenamed Oreshnik, was a direct response to the use of US and UK missiles by Ukraine which hit targets inside Russia.
Putin sent a further warning to the west as he added Russia could attack military facilities of those countries which allowed their weapons to be used for this purpose.
It comes after the US and UK authorised the use of long-range missiles to hit targets within Russian territory including the US ATACMS and UK-supplied Storm Shadow.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, said Russia’s use of the new missile was ‘a clear and severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war’.
Taking to social media platform X he said: “[This] is yet more proof that Russia has no interest in peace. Putin is not only prolonging the war – he is spitting in the face of those in the world who genuinely want peace to be restored.”
Zelensky claims the missile had the characteristics of an intercontinental ballistic missile however Western officials cast doubt on this theory.
The US National Security Council believe Russia only have a handful of these ‘experimental medium-range ballistic missiles’ and that they would not be a game changer.
The Pentagon’s deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the US had been notified “briefly” before the missile was launched through Nuclear Risk Reduction channels – which are used to exchange information on issues including missile launch notifications.
Putin confirmed a ‘test’ had successfully been carried out on a non-nuclear hypersonic version of a ballistic missile and that the target was reached.
In a statement he said: “In response to the use of American and British long-range weaponry, on 21 November this year, the Russian armed forces carried out a combined strike on one of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex sites.”
He added that there was no way of stopping this weapon as it reaches targets at a speed of 10 Mach.
He warned the West that Russia was ‘ready for any developments. If anyone still doubts this, they shouldn’t. There will always be a response.”
