Ukraine’s Air Force reported a threat of a potential intermediate-range ballistic missile launch from a Russian strategic nuclear testing site shortly before midnight on Thursday.
Explosions followed soon after near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, but the country did not say whether a nuclear-capable missile from that testing site was responsible. If confirmed, the use of such a weapon — though armed with conventional or dummy warheads — would be an ominous threat to Ukraine and its Western allies and an escalation by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
The threat was detected at the Kapustin Yar site near the Caspian Sea, the Ukrainian Air Force said in a statement early on Friday. If a nuclear-capable missile were responsible for the strike near Lviv, it would be only the second time in the war that a missile was fired from a testing site for Russia’s strategic nuclear forces, far from Ukraine’s borders. Russia in 2024 struck Ukraine with a new model of intermediate-range missile, known as the Oreshnik, which was also fired from this site.
The missile threat and explosions late Thursday night came at a moment of tensions as Ukraine has rebuffed Russian demands to surrender territory in peace talks and the Trump administration ousted a Russian ally, President Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela.
After Russia fired such an intermediate-range missile at Ukraine, in November 2024, Mr. Putin identified the missile and laid out his reasons for its use. He had fired the missile, he said, in retaliation for the United States and Britain granting permission to Ukraine to strike with Western-made weapons deep into Russian territory.
Early Friday, the Ukrainian Air Force said the threat of a launch came from Russia at about 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, before the explosions were heard in the Lviv region. The mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovyi, wrote in a post on Telegram that explosions damaged infrastructure that he did not specify.
In the firing of an Oreshnik ballistic missile at Ukraine in 2024, Russia struck an aerospace factory in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. But it caused only minimal damage as it carried dummy warheads, suggesting a purely symbolic use of the weapon.
This time, the explosions that followed the warning came far closer to the border with Poland. Poland is a member of NATO and the European Union, suggesting a possible intention to signal a more imminent threat.
After that earlier strike, Mr. Putin touted the weapon as a new development of Russia’s arms industry and a reason for the West to back away from its assistance to Ukraine in defending itself against Russia’s invasion, which began in 2022 but has largely bogged down in slow-moving fighting with Russia gaining little ground.
The Pentagon said the missile was based on an intercontinental missile, the RS-26 Rubezh, which was redesigned with a shorter range. The missile carries multiple warheads that separate in flight and plummet down on a target. Ukraine has no air defense systems capable of shooting it down.
Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.
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