That was Moscow’s response to the firing of American ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia this week. President Putin authorised the launch of a seriously long range weapon. It hit the Dnipro region of Ukraine.
ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) and Storm Shadows have been wrongly labelled long range missiles. A better description would be ‘longer range’ than most projectiles Ukraine has used to date. The former can fly up to 190 miles, the latter about 155 miles. Most experts define long range as well past 3,000 miles. The missile which hit Dnipro was launched from 400 miles away but has a range of about 3,600 miles. There’s debate about if it can be classified as a true Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, and it may or may not have travelled through space as ICBMs normally do, but either way the American satellites will have seen it. It does appear to have been designed to deliver a nuclear warhead. However, that’s not what it carried on Thursday – instead it sent a message – ‘Our threat of using nukes is real’