Putin, After Firing Intermediate-Range Missile Into Ukraine, Warns More Could Be Coming

President Putin has a stark warning for Washington, its NATO allies, and Ukraine: We can fire whatever type of missile we want in retaliation for you firing at us.“We have always preferred, and are now ready to resolve all disputes through peaceful means,” the Russian news agency Tass quoted Mr. Putin as saying after he ordered the firing of an intermediate-range missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. “If anyone still doubts this, they shouldn’t. There will always be an answer.”Mr. Putin carefully left unstated the much more terrifying implication: that the Russians are quite capable of attaching nuclear warheads to such missiles by way of making good on previous warnings of a nuclear response.The missile shot was Russia’s immediate answer to President Biden’s authorizing Ukrainian forces to fire American missiles at targets inside Russia, and then saying the Ukrainians could also plant anti-personnel mines to deter Russian forces, recently beefed up by the addition of at least 11,000 North Korean soldiers.Mr. Putin, revising the country’s nuclear doctrine, has said the Russians can aim nuclear warheads at any nuclear power whose weapons of any kind — nuclear or not — are used against Russia.In a dangerous game of tit-for-tat, the war in Ukraine has suddenly escalated as the Russians try to recapture land taken by the Ukrainians and then drive deep into Ukraine in the final weeks of Mr. Biden’s presidency.The Ukraine armed forces at first said the missile fired on Dnipro was an ICBM — that is, an intercontinental ballistic missile with a range of 3,000 miles — but American and Russian officials quickly denied the missile was all that devastating.Then, amid speculation as to just what the Russians had fired, Mr. Putin went on television to boast of the success of his newest hypersonic intermediate-range missile. At speeds of up to 7,600 miles per hour, it’s potentially just as dangerous in the confines of the war in Ukraine as any ICBM.The missile, Tass quoted him as saying, was an intermediate-range Oreshnik, against which “there are currently no countermeasures for this weapon at this moment.”The missile was fired as a symbol of the hell the Russians might inflict. This initial shot landed on an aerospace engineering factory, apparently inflicting few if any casualties, but the inference was that Mr. Putin could easily order more such shots — and someday possibly tip them with nuclear warheads.It was left a bit unclear as to whether he would issue a warning before firing such a missile again.Mr. Putin did promise that the next time his forces fire the Oreshnik, he would give advance notice. “We will do it due to humanitarian concerns — openly, publicly, without any concerns about any countermeasures from the enemy, who will also receive this information,” he announced on TV.Tass, though, quoted the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as saying Russia “has no such obligation with regard to intermediate-range missiles.”President Zelensky, before Mr. Putin announced exactly what type of missile had been fired, said it was “obvious that Putin is using Ukraine as a training ground,” presumably for a war that could extend much deeper into Ukraine and possibly into other countries bordering Russia.

Putin, After Firing Intermediate-Range Missile Into Ukraine, Warns More Could Be Coming

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