Ukraine Says Russia Struck It With New Missile; ICBM Claim Is Disputed

Russia sent a volley of missiles at the eastern city of Dnipro on Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, the latest assault in a week of rising hostilities between the two adversaries.

Ukraine claimed Russia had used an intercontinental ballistic missile, which would have represented a significant escalation in its assaults. But several Western officials said that the weapon was not an ICBM and instead was likely an intermediate-range missile that flies shorter distances.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private Western intelligence assessment.

The Ukrainians did not provide much detail on the strike, saying only that the missile had been launched from the Russian region of Astrakhan and was part of a volley aimed at Dnipro. The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had attacked Ukraine with a new class of missile. “All the parameters — speed, altitude — match those of an intercontinental ballistic missile,” he said. “All expert evaluations are underway.”

A senior U.S. official said the weapon appeared to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile, adding, “But it is a new type we have been tracking.”

In the last few days, the Ukrainian military has used longer-range American and British missiles to strike deeper into Russia, after the two countries granted permission to do so. In response, President Vladimir V. Putin lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons.

A former senior Ukrainian security official said it seemed likely that the Russian missile strike was intended to stoke fears of a widening war with Ukraine and its Western allies. “In fact, this is just a ballistic missile, just a big one,” the official said.

Speaking at an event to commemorate “Ukrainian revolutions,” Mr. Zelensky said, “Putin is using Ukraine as a testing ground.” “Obviously, Putin is terrified when normal life simply exists next to him,” he said. “When a country simply wants to be and has the right to be independent.”

Ukraine’s claim that an ICBM was used raised alarms because such a missile can carry nuclear warheads but can also be armed with conventional explosives. These are more powerful than the cruise missiles and shorter-range ballistic missiles that Russia has been using to target Ukraine since the first days of the war. There was no claim by Ukraine that a nuclear warhead was on the missile.

The Ukrainian Air Force did not make public what the precise target in Dnipro might have been or what damage might have been caused. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, declined to comment on Ukraine’s claim in his daily conference call with reporters on Thursday.

The air force said that Russia sent a salvo of nine missiles toward the Dnipro region, including an air-launched ballistic missile fired from a MIG-31 fighter and seven cruise missiles launched from strategic bombers.

Ukraine said it shot down six of the cruise missiles.

Local officials reported damage, though the extent was not immediately clear. The attack hit an industrial site and started two fires in the city of Dnipro, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, Serhiy Lysak, wrote on Telegram.

The city’s mayor, Borys Filatov, wrote on Facebook that an explosion had broken windows at a rehabilitation center for disabled people.

The Kremlin had vowed to respond to the decision by President Biden to allow Ukraine to use the American-made ballistic missiles, known as ATACMS, to hit targets inside Russia.

Soon after the restrictions were removed, Ukraine used the missiles to hit an arms depot in the Bryansk region of Russia. The change in American policy was followed by a British decision to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles to hit military targets in Russia. They were used on Wednesday for the first time to strike Russia’s Kursk region, which the Kremlin acknowledged on Thursday.

As concerns grew on Wednesday that Russia was preparing to launch a significant air attack in retaliation, the United States suspended operations at its embassy. It was reopened on Thursday but American officials had no immediate comment on the Ukrainian claim.

Michael Schwirtz, Maria Varenikova, Nataliia Novosolova and Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting.