Russia’s ballistic missile attack on Ukraine raises nuclear fears

Russia’s unprecedented use of a massive ballistic missile against a city in central Ukraine is a message to Kiev and its allies and shows that the war is escalating in unpredictable ways with just two months left in the Biden administration.

Early Thursday morning, Russia struck Dnipro, an industrial city on the Dnieper River, with a weapon not seen before in nearly three years of war.

President-elect-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, and members of his team have said they are willing to force Kiev to cede occupied land to Moscow and cut off military support to reach a deal. The attack signals an effort by the Kremlin to limit the room for maneuver by President Joe Biden, who has authorized Ukraine’s use of key US weapons systems – including tactical missiles and anti-personnel mines – in hopes of bolstering its defensive capabilities ahead. of Trump’s inauguration.

“Russia struck the Yuzhmash factory (a munitions manufacturer) in Dnipro city with a non-nuclear hypersonic ballistic missile, ‘Oreshnik,'” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised speech. He also left the door open to strikes outside Ukraine: “Russia considers itself entitled to use weapons against facilities in those countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russian facilities.”

While Putin’s statement is ambiguous, his message is clear: If allies continue to arm Ukraine, the conflict involving a nuclear power could spin out of control, and Russia could feel compelled to attack the United States or a NATO member.

Videos of the attack in Dnipro show a series of six clusters of munitions breaking through the clouds above Dnipro on a fast ballistic trajectory.

“Today there was a new Russian rocket,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address from his official account on the messaging service Telegram. “Today our crazy neighbor showed once again what he really is and how he despises dignity, freedom and people’s lives in general.”

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Zelensky said the military’s analysis of the weapon’s characteristics, including its speed and the height it reached on its trajectory, indicated it was an intercontinental ballistic missile.

There is no previous record of a Russian missile called “Oreshnik” and it is common for the Kremlin to deliberately muddy the waters about its weapons systems and capabilities. According to initial analysis by military analysts who spoke with Rolling Stonethe weapon used appears to have been a version of an RS-26 Rubezh ballistic missile – a 40-tonne multi-stage solid-propellant missile carrying multiple re-entry vehicles which reaches speeds in excess of 20 times the speed of sound and is capable of to beat thousands of miles from its starting point.

The RS-26 is designed to carry out nuclear strikes. The weapon used against Dnipro appears to have carried multiple conventional explosive warheads.

While it may seem like splitting hairs to worry about what specific type of missile was used against a civilian population center, it can be important both in understanding capabilities and also in terms of messaging. Due to some uncertainty about the RS-26 and its derivatives, experts debate whether it should be classified as an intermediate-range or intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). This technical debate is based on the range of the weapon – there is data that the RS-26 is capable of reaching up to 5,800 kilometers (3,600 miles), surpassing the 5,500 kilometer range used to define a ICBM in some international nuclear disarmament treaties.

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It has relevance to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, an anti-proliferation agreement that the US withdrew from in 2019 over allegations that Russia did not comply with a ban on developing missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 km – including the RS-26. In response, Russia also withdrew from the treaty.

A correspondent for Reuters reported that US officials believe the weapon was an intermediate-range missile and not an ICBM. If Russia had used an ICBM, the Kremlin would have been required to notify Washington of the launch in advance under a treaty governing strategic nuclear weapons known as New START.

As a general principle, most national security professionals agree that it is suboptimal for leaders of nuclear powers to be surprised and unsure whether a missile launched by an adversary carries a nuclear warhead or not.

The White House also has reason to play down the problem. The strike comes after it was reported earlier this week that Biden had authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied tactical missiles, known as ATACMS, against targets inside Russia for the first time since the start of the conflict in 2022.

Putin addressed the decision obliquely: “The conflict in Ukraine has signs of a global war after attacks by long-range Western-made missiles on Russia, because they cannot be launched without the help of the manufacturers.”

But there are indeed undisputed “signs of a global war.” Biden’s ATACMS move was reportedly made in response to the deployment of around 10,000 North Korean troops to Russia, where they have joined a counter-offensive aimed at driving Ukrainian forces from the border province of Kursk. Ukraine had long sought permission to use these missiles, with a range of 200 miles, against targets in Russia to support its Kursk offensive, and on Tuesday it already used them.

Although many of Ukraine’s supporters celebrated Biden’s decision, ATACMS is not seen as a game-changer by military professionals, although they add a useful offensive capability.

“ATACMS can create favorable military conditions. We disrupted logistics by destroying ammunition dumps and bridges in Kursk, destroyed C2 (command and control) nodes, hit a few battalions – creating an operational window. Okay, what’s next? Who will take advantage of it?” says a Ukrainian military source Rolling Stone. “The setbacks that Ukraine is having are not caused by targets that can be neutralized with ATACMS.”

In response to the ATACMS approval, Putin on Tuesday announced a change to his country’s nuclear doctrine, saying a conventional attack by a non-nuclear power with the “participation or support of a nuclear power” would be seen as a “joint attack.” and that Russia reserved the right to a nuclear response.

While Putin has long made a point of touting Russia’s nuclear capabilities in response to military aid provided to Ukraine by the United States and its NATO allies, Moscow is ratcheting up its rhetoric about nuclear war.

“Russia’s new nuclear doctrine means that NATO missiles fired at our country can be considered an attack by the bloc on Russia,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Tuesday. “Russia could retaliate with weapons of mass destruction against (Kiev) and key NATO facilities wherever they are. That means World War III.”

That the atomic saber rattle was accompanied by a flood of messages on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which has become a clearinghouse for Russian talking points. It was also echoed by Republican lawmakers, who criticized Biden’s decision to approve ATACMS as “counterproductive” to Trump’s “stated goal of a negotiated peace.”

“Your recent actions appear to be pushing the world closer to the brink of nuclear war,” Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) wrote in a letter to the president. “Americans do not want World War III.”

Analysts note that the attack on Dnipro with the missile, whatever type it may have been, was telegraphed well in advance.

Foreign embassies across Kiev closed their doors and halted operations on Wednesday, with the US Embassy issuing a statement saying it expected a “significant airstrike.”

“Don’t ignore the air alert. Especially today” warned Boryslav Bereza, a former parliamentarian from the far-right Right Sector party, ahead of the strike. “The enemy plans to launch an attack from the Kapustin Yar area (Astrakhan region) with an experimental medium-range ballistic missile, probably the RS-26 Rubezh missile, against an unspecified target on the territory of Ukraine.”

While the attack is unprecedented and escalating, it does not necessarily indicate a new capability. Strategic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads are not very accurate and can only be used against targets in large areas such as population centers. Notably, officials in Dnipro report that no one was killed in the missile attack earlier today. Contrast that with a large, widespread attack of more than 200 missiles and drones fired at Ukrainian cities early Monday, killing and injuring dozens and causing so much damage to energy infrastructure that rolling blackouts were implemented across the country .

In his televised address, Putin promised to “notify civilians” in advance when weapons like the “Oreshnik” will be fired again.

The real reason for the use of the missile was to reinforce “the brink of nuclear war” psychological operations (psyops), says a US military source with expertise in the region. Rolling Stone: “If you’re so lacking that you have to waste a strategic resource on a tactical psyop, it seems a little desperate.”

The source continues: “If the message is, ‘We’re so short of conventional IRBMs (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) that we’re buying knock-offs from Iran and retro-Frankensteining our top-of-the-line ICBMs to deliver a conventional payload at one-tenth of their maximum range,’ so…cool?”

Military analysts also question whether the strike indicates we are headed for nuclear war.

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“There are not many advantages for Russia in using nuclear weapons. We have no concentration of forces that would result in catastrophic damage to units. Killing a battalion with a nuclear bomb is irrational from a military point of view,” said a Ukrainian analyst who asked not to be named because of their role in handling sensitive information. Rolling Stone. “They also don’t want to use strategic weapons because that’s a whole other can of worms… The risk is too high while the benefits are questionable.”

“I disagree with the assessment that Putin is an irrational actor,” says the analyst. “He’s rational, it’s just that his reasoning is built on incorrect assessments of Ukraine prior to the invasion.”