Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin.
A US intelligence assessment has concluded that Russia may use its lethal new intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine again in “coming days,” a US official said on Wednesday.
The experimental Oreshnik missile is seen by US officials more as an attempt at intimidation than a game-changer on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.
The threat comes as both sides work to gain a battlefield advantage in the nearly 3-year war that President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end, and just days after the US promised close to $1 billion in new security aid to Ukraine. Other western allies have suggested negotiations to end the war could begin this winter.
According to the official, Russia has only a handful of the Oreshnik missiles and that they carry a smaller warhead than other missiles that Russia has regularly launched at Ukraine.
Russia first fired the the weapon in a November 21 missile attack against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Surveillance camera video of the strike showed huge fireballs piercing the darkness and slammed into the ground at astonishing speed.
Within hours of the attack on the military facility, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the rare step of speaking on national TV to boast about the new, hypersonic missile. He warned the West that its next use could be against Ukraine’s Nato allies who allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.
The attack came two days after Putin signed a revised version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. The doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.