Russia Ukraine war: Putin warns West as ‘new missile’ fired

The Pentagon’s deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the US had been notified “briefly” before the missile was launched through Nuclear Risk Reduction channels – which are used to exchange information on issues including missile launch notifications.

Putin said a “test” was successfully carried out on a non-nuclear hypersonic version of a ballistic missile and that the “target was reached”.

“In response to the use of American and British long-range weaponry, on 21 November this year, the Russian armed forces carried out a combined strike on one of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex sites,” he said.

There is no way of counteracting this weapon, which attacks targets at a speed of 10 Mach, or 2.5-3km/s, he said.

And he warned the West that Russia was “ready for any developments. If anyone still doubts this, they shouldn’t. There will always be a response”.

Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at Rusi, a think tank, said available information about the Russian missile suggests something with a longer range than the Iskanders used so far in the conflict, which have a range of up to 500km (311 miles).

Intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) – which Putin appears to have been describing – generally have ranges of between 3,000 and 5,500km.

Savill says the use of such a weapon may not have huge military significance but is symbolically important, coming on the back of Russia’s revised nuclear doctrine which many see as a lowering of the threshold for the use of such weapons.

It is, he says, a not so subtle reminder that Russia has a wider arsenal of different and larger missile types and is ready to develop more.