“In recent days, we have seen alarming signs of further escalation in this already explosive war,” said Miroslav Jenča, Assistant Secretary-General for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, pointing to a strike on 21 November of an industrial area in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, by a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile. According to Ukrainian authorities, the missile, which was equipped with six warheads, took only 15 minutes to arrive from the launch site in the Astrakhan region of the Russian Federation, 1,000 kilometres away from Dnipro city, he said.
Hours after the strike, the President of the Russian Federation confirmed that Moscow had tested a new conventional intermediate-range missile called “Oreshnik”, in response the use of Western supplied long-range missiles by the armed forces of Ukraine against the territory of the Russian Federation, indicating that it would continue to test the new missile in combat. “The use of ballistic missiles and related threats are a very dangerous escalatory development,” Mr. Jenča said, urging all parties to take immediate steps to de-escalate the situation. Läs pressmedelande