The United States and the United Kingdom confirmed today that Russia has used a new type of ballistic missile against Ukraine, in an act that they interpret as an attempt at intimidation.
A senior US government official, quoted by international agencies, stated that it was a "medium-range missile" fired at the city of Dnipro and not an intercontinental missile, as initially reported by the Ukrainian authorities.
According to Washington, this "experimental medium-range ballistic missile" was fired by Russia with the aim of "intimidate Ukraine and the countries that support it".
However, for the US government, this strategy by Moscow "will not change the situation in this conflict".
According to a spokesman for the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, Russia used "for the first time" in Ukraine "a ballistic missile with a range of several thousand kilometers".
"This is obviously very worrying and constitutes a new example of Russia's irresponsible behavior, which only reinforces our determination to support Ukraine for as long as necessary," commented the spokesman for the British Prime Minister.
London did not clarify whether the missile fired was "intercontinental", as claimed by Kiev.
Russian President Vladimir Putin today argued that the use of Western weapons by Ukrainian forces to target his country has turned the war in Ukraine into a "global conflict" and admitted to attacking Kiev's allies involved.
"From this moment on, as we have repeatedly stressed, the conflict in Ukraine, previously provoked by the West, has acquired elements of a global character," Vladimir Putin said in a brief address to the nation.
The Russian President's speech came on the same day that Ukrainian authorities recorded an unprecedented attack in the conflict by a non-nuclear ballistic missile against Dnipro, in the center of the country, which was confirmed by Putin.
"Our engineers named it 'Orechnik'," Putin said in his speech, adding that the strike was carried out with a new intermediate-range missile and targeted "a site of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex."
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