By Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
Vladimir Putin apparently has cleared up the mystery of what sort of missile Russia fired at Ukraine on Thursday.
In the televised address, the Russian leader said that a new medium-range ballistic missile struck the eastern city of Dnipro. Putin spoke several hours after Ukrainian media said that Moscow had fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time in the conflict.
Putin described the weapon, which he called the “Oreshnik,” as a nonnuclear hypersonic ballistic missile which hit a Ukrainian arms factory. He said the attack was a response to President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to launch US-made ATACMS (ARMY Tactical Missile Systems) missiles at targets inside Russia.
“The matter of our deployment of small- and medium-range missiles will depend on the actions of the US and their satellites,” Putin said. “We consider ourselves in the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries, who allow the use of their weapons against our facilities.”
A medium-range ballistic missile has a range of between 620 to 1,860 miles. CNN quoted US and Western officials as saying that the weapon carried multiple warheads, which may be a first for the war between Russia and Ukraine. Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) were designed decades ago to carry multiple nuclear warheads.
According to the Washington Post, Russia probably has limited supplies of the new missile. The Post also reported that Moscow warned the US in advance it was going to use the weapon against Ukraine, although the Kremlin denied that report.
In his speech, Putin said that Ukraine fired six of the ATACMS at Russia, and that the British/French Storm Shadow missiles also were fired. The UK had been reluctant to have its weapons fired into Russia, until the US lifted its own ban.
ATACMS are ballistic missiles with a range of about 190 miles. Military-today.con described ATACMS as a “quasi-ballistic” maneuvering missile, which deviates from a standard ballistic arc in trajectory to perform rapid turns and course corrections on the way to its target.
It was developed back in the 1980s to hit Soviet targets behind the lines, and was a guided weapon during a time when the US relied mostly on unguided weapons.
The missile can be launched with several types of warheads. One of them is an anti-personnel “submunition,” which disperse or scatter is mid-air to widen destruction and potentially hit pockets of enemy soldiers on the move.
