Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that an attack by his forces on the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday morning was carried out using “a new conventional intermediate-range missile”.

He said that the missile, codenamed Oreshnik, was a response to the use by Ukraine of US and UK long-range weaponry to hit targets inside Russia.

Putin added that Russia could attack military facilities of those countries which allowed their weapons to be used for this purpose.

The US and the UK authorised the use of US ATACMS and UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles this week, in a major change of policy.

Meanwhile,

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia’s use of the new missile was “a clear and severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war.”

“[This] is yet more proof that Russia has no interest in peace,” he wrote on X, adding: “Putin is not only prolonging the war – he is spitting in the face of those in the world who genuinely want peace to be restored.”

Earlier, Zelensky said the missile had the characteristics of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), even as Western officials cast doubt on this theory.

The US National Security Council, meanwhile, said “an experimental medium-range ballistic missile” had been used against Ukraine, adding that Russia probably only possessed a handful of these weapons and that they would not be a game changer in the war.