Moscow. Ukraine assured this Thursday that Russia, when launching an attack against the city of Dnipro during the early hours of the morning, used for the first time in the war an RS-26 intercontinental missile, baptized as Rubezh (Milestone), a possibility that the US Pentagon that maintains that it was a ballistic missile, both extremes that the Russian spokespersons from the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry did not want to confirm or deny.
The Ukrainian Air Force, through a statement, reported that Russia attacked the city of Dnipro, where in the times of the Soviet Union the missiles in its arsenal were manufactured, with an RS-26 intercontinental rocket, a Kinzhal ballistic missile and six missiles. cruiser X-101.
Apparently, all of the the “partial destruction of one of its buildings” and two fires broke out.
With this balance, for experts, it is obvious that the RS-26 did not carry any of the six nuclear warheads that it can carry and could even carry a test warhead without explosives or with a smaller charge, its size being –12 meters long. and about 50 tons of weight – enough to cause the damage that Filatov reported when falling.
Since the Rubezh is an intermediate range rocket, no more than six thousand kilometers of autonomy, designed to reach targets in the western part of Europe, it would not make much military sense to use one as close as Ukraine is, having to fire it 998 kilometers away. distance from Astrakhan, between the Volga River and the Caspian Sea and, in addition, there are other less expensive options that can also carry nuclear warheads, the Iskander and Kinzhal missiles.
For this reason, Pentagon specialists, quoted anonymously (for a change, although it is becoming customary) in numerous media outlets, are inclined to think that Russia used not an RS-26, but a ballistic one.
However, neither the Kremlin spokesperson, Dimitri Peskov, nor the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zajarova, wanted to clarify this Thursday whether it was an intercontinental missile.
The first simply said he had no comment to make. And the second, she even exaggerated a bit by interrupting her weekly briefing due to a call to her cell phone from an unknown person – presumably someone of higher rank than her – so that all the reporters could hear, as if it were due to an oversight, the blunt order: “Do not confirm anything,” as could be seen and heard in a video that went around on Russian social networks.
Summing up the conclusions of military analysts, one could say that the doubts in this case benefit both Ukraine and Russia:
That the President of Ukraine, Volodymir Zelensky, insists that, due to the flight characteristics of one of the missiles that fell on Dnipro, it is an RS-26 could be due to an attempt to pressure his partners in the Atlantic Treaty Organization North so that they do not give up on continuing to provide it with weapons, since this intercontinental missile was conceived not to attack a neighbor of Russia, but precisely against the North Atlantic alliance in Europe.
And for Russia, the fact that there are doubts about what type of missile was used in Dnipro does not minimize the opportunity to send a political signal that it is ready to use this intercontinental modality, with very different results if the six nuclear warheads that each one can carry are placed. of those rockets.
Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile during an attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, the kyiv Air Force said, in what would be the first use in war of a weapon designed for long-range nuclear strikes. Via Graphic New
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