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 that the long-range weapon has been used in any armed conflict.
However, ABC News reported, citing western officials, that this was an exaggeration and the weapon used was in fact a shorter-range ballistic missile, similar to the types used repeatedly by Russia against Ukraine during the war.
The weapon was one of nine missiles launched at enterprises and critical infrastructure in the city between 5am and 7am from the Astrakhan region of Russia, meaning that it probably travelled more than 500 miles (800km) to reach its target.
The missile was said to have hit “without consequences” the air force said, though it added that information about victims had yet to be received. Six of the other eight missiles were destroyed by air defences, the air force said in a morning update.
Russian ICBMs 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 use of the weapon is confirmed it was a signal from Moscow.
ICBMs were developed in the 1950s, at the height of the cold war, as a way for the Soviet Union and the US to threaten each other’s populations directly with nuclear weapons. Congressional research estimates that Russia has 326 ICBMs in its nuclear arsenal, but no country had fired one in a war before.
This week, the US and the UK gave permission for Atacms and Storm Shadow missiles to be used against targets in or near the Kursk region of Russia. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said earlier this week that Moscow would respond “accordingly” in response to the initial permission to use Atacms.
On Wednesday, the US suddenly announced its embassy in Kyiv would be closed after receiving warning of a “potential significant air attack” somewhere in Ukraine. It is not clear what prompted the warning and the embassy was due to reopen, but the US closely monitors Russian ICBM activity given the homeland threat.
Ukraine did not identify the type of ICBM it believed had been fired, and there was no immediate corroborating detail, though the trajectory of the missile would be apparent to Ukraine’s air defences and its western allies.
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Initial reports from Dnipro gave only a limited picture of any impact on civilians. Serhiy Lysak, the head of the civil military administration, reported that an industrial enterprise had been damaged and that there were two fires in the city.