27 November 2024
Ambassadors met in the NATO-Ukraine Council on 26 November to discuss the security situation in Ukraine after Russia attacked a military facility in the city of Dnipro with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile on 21 November.
During the meeting, NATO member states reaffirmed their support for Ukraine. According to the brief NATO statement, the attack was seen as “another attempt by Russia to terrorise the civilian population in Ukraine and intimidate those who support Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s illegal and unprovoked aggression”. NATO spokesperson, Farah Dakhlallah, said “deploying this capability will neither change the course of the conflict nor deter NATO Allies from supporting Ukraine”.
On the day of the meeting Russia launched 188 drones and four cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine. In recent months, Russia has been targeting Ukrainian cities with increasingly heavy drone, missile, and glide bomb strikes, causing casualties and damaging energy infrastructure.
The conflict is "entering a decisive phase," Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said earlier on 22 November, and "taking on very dramatic dimensions". Ukraine's parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened following the Russian missile strike. Ukrainian officials said the missile that hit Dnipro had reached a speed of Mach 11 and carried six nonnuclear warheads each releasing six submunitions. They said it was fired from the Kapustin Yar 4th Missile Test Range in Russia's Astrakhan region and flew 15 minutes before striking Dnipro.
In his nightly video address on 22 November, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky called it a "clear and severe escalation" by Russia and accused Putin of using Ukraine as a "testing ground". "Today, our crazy neighbour has once again shown what he really is and how he despises dignity, freedom, and human life in general. And how afraid he is," he added.
Missile proliferation since the demise of the INF Treaty
President Vladimir Putin said in a nationally televised speech on 22 November that the attack with the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was in retaliation for Kyiv's use of US and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory. Putin said Western air defence systems would be powerless to stop the new missile.
“I believe that the United States made a mistake by unilaterally destroying the treaty on the elimination of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles in 2019 under a far-fetched pretext,” the Russian president said, referring to the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The US formally withdrew from the 1987 INF Treaty with Russia in 2019 after saying that Moscow was violating the accord, an accusation Russia denied.
Gen. Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with nuclear or conventional warheads. The Pentagon confirmed the missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile, and that Russian officials warned the US of the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels. This helped prevent it being misidentified as an intercontinental ballistic missile and therefore a possible nuclear threat.
Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, said President Putin had earlier hinted that Russia would complete the development of an IRBM system after Washington and Berlin agreed to deploy long-range US missiles in Germany from 2026.
The Russian strike was seen largely as a response to the Biden administration’s authorization for the Ukrainian military to use the US-made ATACMS missile system to strike deeper into Russian territory. On 19 November Ukraine reportedly used the system to fire six missiles into Russia’s western Bryansk region, which Moscow said it successfully defended. A day later, the Ukrainian military also struck Russian targets with UK-made long-range Storm Shadow missiles. Moscow’s position for months has been that an attack on Russian territory with British, French or US-made missiles would constitute direct warfare against those countries.
Earlier Putin signed an update to Russian nuclear policy that lowers the threshold for a retaliatory strike with nuclear weapons. The revised document says Russia could use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear or WMD strike against Russia or its allied nations, or in response to aggression against Russia or Belarus with conventional weapons threatening their sovereignty or territorial integrity.
In Kyiv, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský called the Russian missile strike an "escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe." He underlined that the Czech Republic will impose no limits on the use of its weapons and equipment given to Ukraine.
Russia’s development of new missiles might influence decisions in NATO member states regarding what air defence systems to purchase as well as which offensive capabilities to pursue. NATO formally took control of a new US ballistic missile defence base, the Aegis Ashore Missile Defence System, in Redzikowo, northern Poland, this month. The base is part of a broader NATO missile defence system, including a counterpart in Romania, that is designed to intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles. In terms of offensive options, Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of NATO's military committee, recently appeared to suggest that this could include pre-emptive strikes against Russian missile launch sites.
On 25 November, NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly meeting during its 70th Annual Session in Montréal, Canada, adopted a resolution urging member states to provide Ukraine with medium-range missiles capable of targeting Russian strategic positions. Among the recommendations are calls to bolster long-term security assistance, increase defence spending across NATO member states, and ensure timely delivery of advanced weaponry to Ukraine, such as air defence systems, multi-role combat aircraft and long-range precision weapons.
The next meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council is due to take place during the meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers that will be held on 3-4 December.