US warns Russia may be ready to use new lethal missile against Ukraine again in ‘coming days’

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. intelligence assessment has concluded that Russia may use its lethal new intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine again soon, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The Oreshnik missile, which was used for the first time last month, is seen more as an attempt at intimidation than as a game-changer on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to one of the officials.

The threat comes as both sides work to gain a battlefield advantage in the nearly 3-year war, which President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end, and just days after the U.S. promised close to $1 billion in new security aid to Ukraine. Other Western allies have suggested negotiations to end the war could begin this winter.

One of the officials said the U.S. is seeing potential preparations for another launch by the end of the month or sooner. The other said in the “coming days.” The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.

The Russian Defense Ministry also suggested that Moscow is prepared to retaliate because Ukraine used six U.S.-made ATACMS missiles to strike a military air base in Taganrog in the southern Rostov region on Wednesday, injuring soldiers. It said two of the missiles were shot down by an air defense system and four others deflected by electronic warfare assets.

“This attack with Western long-range weapons will not be left unanswered and relevant measures will be taken,” the ministry said in a statement.

This isn’t the first time that U.S. officials have warned of potential Russian action or strategic moves, in part as a diplomatic effort to message Moscow and possibly sway decisions.

In the run-up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. openly discussed intelligence that Russia was readying troops to move on Kyiv. And later publicly said Moscow was positioning operatives in eastern Ukraine to conduct a “false-flag operation” that would create a pretext for its troops to invade.

According to the U.S. officials, Russia has only a handful of the Oreshnik missiles and they carry a smaller warhead than other missiles that Russia has regularly launched at Ukraine.

Russia first fired the missile in a Nov. 21 attack against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Surveillance camera video of the strike showed huge fireballs piercing the darkness and slamming into the ground at astonishing speed. It was the first time the weapon was used in combat.

Within hours of the attack on the military facility, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the rare step of speaking on national TV to boast about the new, hypersonic missile. He warned the West that its next use could be against Ukraine’s NATO allies who allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.

The attack came two days after Putin signed a revised version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. The doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.

That strike also came soon after President Joe Biden agreed to loosen restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American-made longer-range weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory, and just one day after the U.S. said it was giving Ukraine antipersonnel mines to help it slow Russia’s battlefield advances.

“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities of the countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities,” Putin said at the time.

He also warned that the new missile could be used against other Ukrainian sites, including the government district in Kyiv, and last month said the General Staff of the Russian military was selecting possible future targets, such as military facilities, defense plants or decision-making centers in Kyiv.

The Russian president declared that, “while selecting targets for strikes with such systems as Oreshnik on the territory of Ukraine, we will ask civilians and nationals of friendly countries there to leave dangerous zones in advance.”

Putin has hailed Oreshnik’s capability, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at Mach 10 are immune from interception and are so powerful that the use of several of them in one conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack.

Speaking Tuesday, Putin charged that “a sufficient number of these advanced weapon systems simply makes the use of nuclear weapons almost unnecessary.”

The Pentagon said the Oreshnik was an experimental type of intermediate-range ballistic missile, or IRBM, based on Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. They have said it is not technically a hypersonic missile as it does not have a hypersonic glide vehicle that propels the missile for most of the launch and re-entry.

Intermediate-range missiles can fly between 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,400 miles). Such weapons were banned under a Soviet-era treaty that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019.

Fighting has escalated in the grinding war as both Russia and Ukraine scramble to get an upper hand in any coming negotiations. Trump’s inauguration next month has also raised questions about how much support the U.S. will continue to provide to Kyiv.

Trump has insisted in recent days that Russia and Ukraine immediately reach a ceasefire and said Ukraine should likely prepare to receive less U.S. military aid. Writing on social media last weekend, Trump said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.”

The Biden administration, meanwhile, announced a $988 million long-term aid package last weekend. That funding is on top of an additional $725 million in U.S. military assistance, including counter-drone systems and HIMARS munitions, announced early last week that would be drawn from the Pentagon’s stockpiles to get them to the front lines more quickly. The U.S. has provided Ukraine with more than $62 billion in military aid since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Aamer Madhani And Lolita C. Baldor, The Associated Press