Russia conducts first ICBM strike on Ukraine

Russia may have carried out its first ICBM missile attack on Ukraine by launching an RS-26 ballistic missile, Russian military blogger Yuriy Podolyaka said with reference to Ukrainian media outlets.

According to the correspondent, the strike was presumably carried out on one of the industrial enterprises in the Dnipropetrovsk region. According to the Ukrainian media outlets he cited, the missile could have been launched from the Kapustin Yar test site.

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Telegram channel Two Majors said that the Russian forces may have struck a Ukrainian airbase.

Kremlin does not confirm ICBM strike on Ukraine

The Kremlin neither confirmed, nor denied the fact of the strike.

"I recommend that you contact the military about this, I have nothing to say on this topic now," Kremlin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters November 21.

Mash Telegram channel said with reference to Ukrainian sources that the Russian Armed Forces struck the Yuzhmash plant in Dnepropetrovsk. An experimental RS-26 Rubezh missile was used for the strike, the channel said.

"According to information from the scene, the Yuzhmash plant was completely destroyed in six strikes,” the channel said adding that the plant was used, among other things, to repair US Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and German Leopard tanks.

According to unconfirmed reports, the missile that was used for the strike was equipped with a blast warhead weighing several tons.

Details

The RS-26 Rubezh (in Russian: РС-26 Рубеж meaning frontier or boundary), designated by NATO as SS-X-31, is a Russian solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It is equipped with a thermonuclear MIRV or MaRV payload, and is also intended to be capable of carrying the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle. The RS-26 is based on RS-24 Yars, and constitutes a shorter version of the RS-24 with one fewer stages. The development process of the RS-26 has been largely comparable to that of the RSD-10 Pioneer, a shortened derivative of the RT-21 Temp 2S. Deployment of the RS-26 is speculated to have a similar strategic impact as the RSD-10.