Ukraine claims Russia fired intercontinental ballistic missiles at Dnipro | Ukraine

Ukraine’s air force has said Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at the city of Dnipro, which, if confirmed, would be the first time the long-range weapon has been used in any armed conflict.

However, the claim was not immediately accepted by others. ABC News reported, citing Western officials, that this was an exaggeration and that the weapon was in fact a short-range ballistic missile, similar to the types repeatedly used by Russia against Ukraine during the war.

Nine projectiles were fired at businesses and critical infrastructure in Dnipro between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. local time from the Astrakhan region of Russia, the air force said, meaning that if confirmed, the missile likely traveled about 800 miles (800 km) to reach its target.

The missile was said to have hit “without consequences”, the air force said, although it added that information on casualties had not yet been received. Six of the nine projectiles were destroyed by the Air Force, the Air Force said in a morning update.

John Healey, the British defense secretary, told MPs he was aware of media reports that Russia had used “a new ballistic missile into Ukraine” and described them as unconfirmed.

Video, said to be of the incident from a distance, showed the ground being hit in several flashes.

Russian ICBMs can have ranges of more than 6,200 miles, in theory enough to reach the US East Coast from Astrakhan, and are capable of being nuclear-armed, suggesting that if the weapon’s use is confirmed, it was a signal from Moscow.

Russia has not officially acknowledged the use of an ICBM, and its Defense Ministry has omitted any reference to it in its daily briefing.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova appeared to inadvertently reveal some details of the early morning strike during a live press briefing on Thursday.

A hot microphone captured Zakharova’s phone conversation with an unidentified caller instructing her not to comment “on the ballistic missile attack.” It is noteworthy that the caller did not use the word intercontinental.

In the short telephone exchange – of which recordings remain accessible on the State Department’s official account on X – the caller appears to reveal that the attack was aimed at the Yuzhmash military facility in Dnipro.

An agreement between the United States and Russia signed in 2000, in theory, each side must notify the other at least 24 hours before any planned missile launch over 500 km. It is unclear whether such notice was given.

Pavel Podvig, an expert on Russian nuclear weapons, said there was not yet enough information to determine whether the weapon used was an ICBM or not. “You have to be skeptical and cautious,” he said in a post on Bluesky.

Using an ICBM would not make military sense because of their low accuracy and high cost, he added, although he wrote: “This kind of attack may have value as a signal”.

ICBMs were developed in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, as a way for the Soviet Union and the United States to directly threaten each other’s populations with nuclear weapons. US congressional research estimates that Russia has 326 ICBMs in its nuclear arsenal, but no country had launched one in a war before.

This week, the US and UK authorized Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles to be used against targets in or near the Kursk region of Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that Moscow would respond “accordingly” in response to the first authorization to use Atacms.

On Wednesday, the United States suddenly announced that its embassy in Kiev would be closed after receiving warning of a “potentially significant airstrike” somewhere in Ukraine. It is not clear what prompted the warning and the embassy to reopen, but the US is closely monitoring Russian ICBM activity given the threat from the homeland.

Ukraine did not identify the type of ICBM it believed had been fired, and there were no immediate confirming details, although the missile’s trajectory would be clear to Ukraine’s air defenses and its Western allies.

Initial reports from Dnipro gave only a limited picture of possible consequences for civilians. Serhiy Lysak, the head of the Civil Military Administration, reported that an industrial plant had been damaged and that there were two fires in the city.