“TOTALLY UNPRECEDENTED”
The NATO military alliance did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The US European Command said it had nothing on the reported use of an ICBM and referred questions to the US Department of Defense.
“If true this will be totally unprecedented and the first actual military use of ICBM. Not that it makes a lot of sense given their price and precision,” Andrey Baklitskiy of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research posted on X.
German security expert Ulrich Kuehn posted: “It looks as if Russia has today used an intercontinental ballistic missile in a war for the first time in history, against the civilian target Dnipro.”
Some military experts said the ICBM launch, if confirmed, could be seen as an act of deterrence by Moscow following Kyiv’s strikes into Russia with Western weapons this week.
“An ICBM launch can certainly be seen as a threatening gesture, potentially in response to the lifting of restrictions on ATACMS and Storm Shadow. It’s a means of deterrence,” said a European military source.
Russian war correspondents on Telegram and an official speaking on condition of anonymity said Kyiv fired British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russia’s Kursk region bordering Ukraine on Wednesday.
Russia’s defence ministry, in its daily report of events over the previous 24 hours on Thursday, said air defences had shot down two British Storm Shadow cruise missiles but did not say where. Britain had previously let Ukraine use Storm Shadows within Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine also fired U.S. ATACMS missiles into Russia on Tuesday after US President Joe Biden gave the all-clear to use such missiles, two months before he leaves office and Donald Trump returns to the White House. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks.
Trump has said he will end the war, without saying how, and criticised billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine under Biden. The warring sides believe Trump is likely to push for peace talks – not known to have been held since the war’s earliest months – and are trying to attain strong positions before negotiations.
Moscow has said the use of Western weapons to strike Russian territory far from the border would be a major escalation in the conflict. Kyiv says it needs the capability to defend itself by hitting Russian rear bases used to support Moscow’s February 2022 invasion.
