This Thursday evening, a senior American official affirmed that the missile which was allegedly fired at Ukraine was an “experimental medium-range ballistic missile”, and not an intercontinental missile, as kyiv declares. Moscow “seeks to intimidate Ukraine and the countries that support it by using this weapon, or to attract attention, but that will not change the situation in this conflict,” he said.
An intercontinental missile would have been fired by Russia in Ukraine: “If it is true, it is an extremely serious event”
Serhiy Lysak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, which was targeted by the attack, said that “an industrial building, several houses, garages and a rehabilitation center were damaged. Two people were injured.”
The intercontinental missile that Ukraine claims was sent by Russia is likely an RS-26, also known as the “Rubezh” that can travel distances of more than 5,500 kilometers.
If these missiles are worrying, it is because they are capable of containing several nuclear warheads. A priori, the one that was launched this morning did not contain any. William Freer, a researcher at the UK-based think tank Council on Geostrategy, explains in Newsweek that “Russia likely used RS-26 to try to intimidate Ukraine’s supporters by escalating tensions around the use of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile, capable of striking European capitals. Its use is a signal rather than a military necessity.
Stéphane Audrand, international risks consultant, explains to Le Parisien that each warhead that can be contained in this missile targets the “same area” but each can have an independent trajectory. Each warhead would have a nuclear power more than 10 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Newsweek notes that doubts remain about the exact distance the missile allegedly fired is capable of traveling.
If Ukraine’s claims prove true, it would be the first time an RS-26 missile has been sent, and it is still classified as “under development.”
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