Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time during the Ukraine war, military authorities in Kyiv said early Thursday, though Western officials later cited in media reports disputed the claim, saying that overnight attacks on Ukraine had used ballistic missiles only.
According to Ukraine’s General Staff, Russian forces launched an ICBM from the southern Astrakhan region, whose capital city lies around 650 kilometers (403 miles) east of the border with Ukraine.
That alleged launch came amid an overnight Russian missile attack on the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine, with military officials saying air defense systems shot down six rockets. City authorities later said that a rehabilitation center for the disabled was damaged in the attack.
Ukraine’s military did not say whether its air defense systems downed the reported ICBM during the Dnipro strikes. It did not provide any further details about that launch.
The Moscow Times could not independently verify the claims. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s Defense Ministry about the reported ICBM launch.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later on Thursday declined to comment on Ukraine’s claim, telling journalists that questions about it should be directed to the Russian military.
Similarly, in a bizarre episode, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova interrupted a morning briefing with journalists to take a phone call, during which a man’s voice could be heard telling her to “not comment at all” about “ballistic missile strikes.”
An unnamed Western official told ABC that the overnight strikes on Ukraine did not appear to use an ICBM, and instead ballistic missiles were fired in the attacks.
While ICBMs are designed to carry nuclear warheads, they can also carry non-nuclear weapons, including conventional, chemical and biological. An anonymous Ukrainian Air Force source told AFP that the ICBM allegedly fired overnight Wednesday did not carry a nuclear warhead.
Russia’s Astrakhan region is home to the Kaputsin Yar military training area and a rocket launch complex, which has been used as a test site since the early days of the Cold War.
The reported ICBM launch comes days after President Vladimir Putin lowered Russia’s threshold for using nuclear weapons, a move widely seen as retaliation for Washington allowing Ukraine’s military to strike targets inside Russia with long-range weapons it supplied.
AFP contributed reporting.
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