Ukraine says Russia just became the first country to use an ICBM in war, but the West isn’t so sure

 A Russian ICBM on display during a military parade in Moscow.

Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Ukraine’s military said Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile at the country Thursday.Some officials, including President Zelenskyy, say the missile was new and is being examined.However, Western officials have been pushing back on the ICBM claims.

Ukraine says Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile at the country early on Thursday. There are some questions about the claim, but if that is what was launched, it would mark the first time an ICBM has ever been used in combat.

The Ukrainian Air Force said that Russia launched the ICBM at the centrally located city of Dnipro from its southeastern Astrakhan region, several hundred miles away. Kyiv’s Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security said it’s the “first time in history” that this weapon was fired in a war.

Some Western officials are pushing back on the Ukrainian claims, asserting that Russia launched a ballistic missile but not an ICBM.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the missile that struck Dnipro as “new,” explaining that its speed and altitude matched those of an ICBM. He said the Kremlin is using Ukraine as “a testing ground.”

There has been some speculation that the Russian missile launched at Ukraine might have been an RS-26, an ICBM in name but an intermediate-range ballistic missile in application.

Heorhii Tykhyi, a Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson, said that “we’re awaiting expert conclusions to determine the exact type of new missile that Russia fired at Ukraine this morning, which had all flight characteristics of an ICBM.”

An ICBM is a ballistic missile that is generally considered to have a range of over 3,400 miles. It is fired into space from silos or road-mobile transporter erector launchers. Some carry multiple independent re-entry vehicles with separate warheads for greater devastation. The weapon is primarily strategic and intended for the delivery of a nuclear payload.

Video footage said to be from the Dnipro attack shows multiple objects impacting the ground, though there do not appear to be any visible explosions. Some expert observers have said the warheads may have been inert.

Western officials are challenging the Ukrainian ICBM claims, telling multiple outlets that Russia launched a ballistic missile but not an ICBM. Some said it was likely a shorter-range IRBM instead. A Pentagon official told Business Insider that the US is looking into the situation.

Russia has not said what type of missile was used in the Dnipro attack. A foreign ministry spokesperson was told at a press briefing not to discuss the strike in a moment that has since spread on social media.

Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, said in a social media thread that the “intercontinental” claims should be approached with skepticism and caution.

“Using these kinds of missiles, whether RS-26 or a true ICBM, in a conventional role does not make a lot of sense because of their relatively low accuracy and high cost,” he said. “But this kind of a strike might have a value as a signal.”

As for what that signal might be, Fabian Hoffmann, a doctoral research fellow at the Oslo Nuclear Project, said that the fact that the missile appeared to carry reentry vehicles “is much more significant for signaling purposes and is the reason Russia opted for it.”

“This payload is exclusively associated with nuclear-capable missiles,” he said.

If Russia did fire an ICBM at Ukraine, it would mark a significant escalation in the conflict, which just passed the 1,000-day mark and comes amid a series of significant developments in the war.

The US last weekend loosened restrictions on Ukraine’s use of longer-range Western missiles to strike targets inside Russia, and Kyiv has since used American-made ballistic missiles and British-made cruise missiles to strike across the border for the first time.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin this week approved an update to the country’s nuclear doctrine. The move seemed to directly respond to the Western missile policy reversal.