Russia fires missiles at Ukraine after Kyiv first uses US long-range missiles inside Russia

Russia launched a barrage of missiles at Ukraine on Thursday in its first major retaliation for Ukraine’s attack earlier in the week on a military base in Russia’s Bryansk region. That strike saw the Ukrainians use American-made and supplied long-range cruise missiles known as ATACMS, which President Biden had authorized Ukrainian forces to fire deep into Russian territory two days earlier.

Moscow had warned the US and its NATO allies for months about giving Ukraine permission to fire Western missiles into Russia, and Mr. Biden’s decision over the weekend to allow such strikes issued new warnings from Russian lawmakers and media close to President Vladimir Putin that the US is expanding almost three years of conflict in danger of starting a new world war.

The US and its allies have argued that Putin is escalating the war he started by ordering an all-out invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 24, 2022, including sending North Korea more than 10,000 troops to bolster its forces in recent weeks. But there was little doubt that Moscow would respond to the Ukrainians’ first use of American ATACMS to strike inside Russia in some way, with an air strike. An alarm was sounded across the country on Wednesday as the US closed its embassy in Kyiv and warned of the possibility of “significant airstrikes.”

This attack did not come on Wednesday, but happened overnight, Russian missiles targeted several cities but, hit the center-east of Dnipro very hard. The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia’s attack on the city included its first use during an intercontinental ballistic missile war, although a Western official told CBS News on Thursday that an ICBM was not used in the strike.

Two US officials also told CBS News that Russia fired a ballistic missile, not an ICBM, on Thursday, and one said it appeared to be an intermediate ballistic missile launched east of Volgograd, Russia, to target Dnipro. If accurate, that would be a flight path of about 500 miles.

Despite denials from US officials, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media that “all elements” of the Russian missile used in the Dnipro strike “are compatible with an intercontinental ballistic missile,” although he said the investigation was ongoing. in order to ensure exactly what was fired from the city.

Zelenskyy accused “our crazy neighbor” Russia of using his country as a “testing ground” for its new weapons.

A US official told CBS News late Thursday that Russia is believed to have launched a missile that was based on Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh.

The US was informed before the launch of the nuclear risk reduction channels, the official said, adding that the US had informed Ukraine and close allies in recent days about the possibility that Russia could use such a weapon to help them prepare.

Russia may have a number of these ballistic missiles, the official said, noting that Ukraine has been able to withstand repeated Russian attacks with missiles carrying warheads larger than all ballistic missile IRBMs.

The official also added that President Biden earlier this year said the US was providing Ukraine with hundreds more Patriot and AMRAAM missiles to reinforce it air defensemany of which have already been delivered.

During a televised press conference in Moscow on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova received a call and a man known only as “Masha” was heard ordering her not to comment “on the missile strike by the West. He started talking” about Dnipro.

Ukraine’s air force did not say what the alleged Russian ICBM was targeting or what damage it caused, but the governor of Dnipro region, Serhiy Lysak, said the strike destroyed factories and ignited fires in the city, injuring 15 people.

The Ukrainian Air Force said the Russian attack included Kinzhal a hypersonic missile and seven cruise missiles – all multi-use weapons previously by Russia during the war. Six Russian missiles were shot down, the air force said.

The strike came hours after a CBS News crew in Kyiv, along with hundreds of thousands of residents of the Ukrainian capital, were forced to seek shelter in underground parking lots, subway stations and basements on Wednesday as air raid alarms sounded.

In the end, no missiles arrived on Wednesday, leaving Ukraine to blame Russia for the missile attack.

“We are very worried,” a young Kyiv resident told CBS News. “We want to keep our country. We want to live in peace.”

After more than two and a half years of war in Ukraine, the scars and concerns run deep.

“It could happen at any minute, at any hour,” Major Taras Berezovets, of Ukraine’s defense forces, told CBS News, saying that Russia and Putin are harassing his country, trying to intimidate Ukrainians into surrendering — “trying to make the conclusion that the kind of resisting the Russian invasion is absolutely useless.”

Some believe that Russia and Ukraine are trying to maximize their leverage — and in turn, their leverage in any ceasefire negotiations — before President-elect Donald Trump returns to office in January.

There are growing fears in Ukraine and European capitals that Trump could reduce US support for Kyiv, which has forced President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government to accept a diplomatic deal with Russia that sees Ukraine hand over land previously occupied by Putin’s forces.

contributed to this report.