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Ukrainian ballistics experts recently issued a press statement regarding an unknown missile type just fired by Russia at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro after studying its remnants.
According to the experts, who didn’t take questions and whose surnames weren’t disclosed, the weapon struck following a ballistic arc, traveling 8,000 miles per hour (13,000 kmph). Reuters reported that it was an intermediate-range missile, typically capable of striking between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.
These missiles had been prohibited between the US and Russia since the Reagen Administration, but during Donald Trump’s first term the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which banned them was allowed to elapse.
Russia has dubbed the missile the Oreshnik (Hazel Tree) and said it is impossible to intercept it with air defenses, according to Reuters, but the experts declined to name the weapon.
“These are preliminary conclusions and to say something more concrete requires time and careful study of the remains of the missile,” said Ivan, one of the experts. “This is the first time that such remnants of such a missile have been discovered on the territory of Ukraine,” said Oleh, an investigator for the Security Service of Ukraine.
The Kremlin later said it did fire a weapon, declining to name it specifically, at Dnipro in response to lame-duck President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire US-made missiles into Russian territory, a major escalation that, even following the provision of these missiles, of main battle tanks, and F-16s fighter jets to Ukrainian forces, the Pentagon and White House were reluctant to authorize.
“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities,” Russian President Putin said. “If anyone else doubts this, then they are wrong—there will always be a response”.
Strategic conditions
The strikes come at a crucial point in the war for Ukraine, where the nation risks losing potentially much more than just the Donbas regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. Newly-reelected President Trump has said the war will end shortly after he takes power, while both the Ukrainian defense and its incursion into the Kursk region of Russia, are failing.
Ukraine has lost 40% of the territory it took during its surprise offensive in Kursk, where North Korean special forces have participated alongside Russian soldiers in the counter-offensive.
“At most, we controlled about 1,376 square kilometers, now of course this territory is smaller. The enemy is increasing its counterattacks,” a source in Ukraine’s General Staff told Reuters. “Now we control approximately 800 square kilometers. We will hold this territory for as long as is militarily appropriate”.
It has since been confirmed that a peace agreement had been reached in April of 2022 in Istanbul that would have seen Ukraine keep much more territory than Kyiv currently controls in exchange for promises of neutrality and that it was from the direct urging of US and UK officials that Ukraine declined to sign the agreement.
Sergey Mironov, a leftist coalition leader in the Russian state Duma, or parliament, (Putin is of the center-right party) offers voice to the thoughts of the Russian opposition such as it is, seeing the news that the biggest escalation yet seen in the war was just authorized.
“Russia and its people cannot be intimidated by missiles of even short or long range. We will not agree to the senseless and dangerous freezing of the conflict in Ukraine,” Mironov wrote in a statement. “But the escalation may meet the interests of a wide variety of players”. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: President Zelenskyy addressing the government on the 1,000th day of the war against Russia. PC: Emergency Services of Ukraine CC BY-SA 4.0.
