Moscow’s new nuclear-capable missile hits Ukraine, but targets the West

(Originally published Nov. 22 in “What in the World“) Russia fired a new, nuclear-capable ballistic missile at Ukraine.

The Oreshnik missile, an experimental intermediate-range missile, had multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, or MIRVs, a feature common to nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was the first time Russia has used a nuclear-capable missile against Ukraine.

While the missile was fired at a Ukrainian arms factory in Dnipro, a city just behind the front lines, the launch was also intended as a message to the West after U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to fire long-range Western missiles against targets inside Russia. Ukraine this week fired U.S. Atacms at targets into Bryansk province, and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Kursk province. “In response to the use of American and British long-range weaponry, on 21 November this year,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “the Russian armed forces carried out a combined strike on one of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex sites.”

Washington dismissed the missile as “signaling” to dissuade the West from aiding Ukraine. But other officials warned that Moscow might instead be simply using Ukraine to test a missile it might use against targets in Europe. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told state-run news agency Tass that one priority target is the new U.S. anti-missile base in northwestern Poland.

The base, which was opened earlier this month in Redzikowo, uses the U.S. Navy’s Aegis Ashore system to detect and destroy incoming missiles. Washington had long claimed the base, first conceived during the Administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush and commissioned under former U.S. President Barack Obama, was mainly for targeting Iranian missiles. Moscow complained it could be repurposed to launch offensive missiles into Russia. Building the Redzikowo base, where hundreds of U.S. Navy personnel will be stationed, has been cited as one of the developments that convinced Putin he had little choice but to invade Ukraine to halt and reverse the steady strategic strangulation of Russia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.