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Ukraine has said Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022, following days of escalation in the conflict.
Ukrainian air defence forces on Thursday said the missile, which did not carry a nuclear warhead, was fired alongside seven Kh-101 cruise missiles at the southern city of Dnipro.
A senior Ukrainian military official told the Financial Times that the missile was an RS-26 Rubezh, which has a range of up to 6,000km.
Ukraine said it had intercepted six of the accompanying Russian missiles, but not the RS-26, which it said had been launched from Russia’s southern Astrakhan region.
British defence secretary John Healey referred on Thursday to “unconfirmed reports” of “a new ballistic missile” launched at Ukraine that the Russians “have been preparing for months”.
Some analysts dispute the classification of RS-26 as an intercontinental missile, arguing that, because it has a shorter range than most ICBMs, it sits in a grey area between that designation and an intermediate-range missile.
But under the US and Russia’s New Start nuclear arms control treaty of 2010, an ICBM was defined as a “land-based ballistic missile with a range in excess of 5,500km”.
Before Thursday, no ICBM had been recorded as being used in conflict.
Two people were injured in the attack, according to local authorities. It is not clear what the missile was targeting or the extent of the damage caused.
“Using these kinds of missiles, whether RS-26 or a true ICBM, in a conventional role does not make a lot of sense because of their relatively low accuracy and high cost,” Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, wrote on X.
“But this kind of a strike might have a value as a signal,” he added.
The use of the RS-26 comes after Ukraine launched US-made long-range Atacms missiles and British Storm Shadows at Russian territory in recent days.
Responding to the Atacms strikes, Russia altered its nuclear doctrine to lower its threshold for first use.
The range of ICBMs, which are designed to carry nuclear warheads between continents, is far greater than that of missiles such as Atacms and Storm Shadows, which can travel 250km to 300km.
Russia has previously used shorter-range nuclear-capable missiles to hit Ukraine. Russian forces have repeatedly fired ground-launched Iskander short-range ballistic missiles and the air-launched hypersonic Kinzhal missile, both capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Most ICBMs have a range far greater than the RS-26 and can travel between 8,000km and 15,000km.
The “RS-26 is not really an intercontinental missile. It was tested at the range of more than 5,500km, but it is in effect an intermediate-range missile”, said Podvig.
Ukrainian military expert Mykhailo Samus said the use of an ICBM would be intended to signal Moscow’s anger at the US decision to allow the use of Atacms on Russian soil.
The strike comes two months before president-elect Donald Trump re-enters the White House. Trump has pledged to bring the war in Ukraine swiftly to an end, without specifying how he would do so.
Samus said Russia would have had to notify the US that it planned to launch an ICBM to avoid the risk of US systems mistaking it for a nuclear attack on Nato.
He added Ukraine’s air defences do not have the capability to intercept an ICBM.
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