Russia Says It Used Nuclear-Capable Missile to Strike Western Ukraine

The attack seemed intended to send a message to Europe as it strongly backs Kyiv in the peace talks.

The Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday that it had struck western Ukraine with a nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile, an ominous warning by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as U.S.-led negotiations to end the war have gained steam.

The attack was only the second time in the war that Moscow had fired that type of missile, known as the Oreshnik. The choice of western Ukraine — near the border with Poland, an E.U. and NATO member — as the target seemed intended to send a message to Europe as it strongly backs Kyiv in the settlement talks.

With the strike, Russia is escalating the fighting in Ukraine even as it has offered a muted response to challenges in other places around the globe, including in Venezuela. There, the Trump administration ousted a Russian ally, President Nicolás Maduro, last week. On Wednesday, the United States seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic that Washington had placed under sanctions for illicit oil shipments.

Russia said on Friday that it had used the Oreshnik missile and other weapons to hit drone-making and energy infrastructure in Ukraine. Explosions were reported early Friday near the western city of Lviv after the Ukrainian military warned of a potential missile launch from a Russian strategic nuclear testing site, the Kapustin Yar facility near the Caspian Sea. There were no reports of deaths from that strike.

The Oreshnik can carry conventional or dummy warheads in addition to nuclear ones, and it was unclear how the missile used on Friday had been equipped.

The Russian Defense Ministry called the strike a response to an attempted Ukrainian attack last month on one of Mr. Putin’s residences in Russia. Ukrainian officials have called the Kremlin’s claims of an attack on the residence a lie intended to derail the peace talks, warning that Russia may be seeking a pretext for intensified strikes. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that there is no evidence that such an attack occurred on the Putin residence.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine demanded global action to punish Russia in response to the Oreshnik strike.

“A clear reaction from the world is needed. Above all from the United States, whose signals Russia truly pays attention to,” he wrote on social media. “Russia must receive signals that it is its obligation to focus on diplomacy, and must feel consequences every time it again focuses on killings and the destruction of infrastructure.”

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, called the strike “a grave threat to the security of the European continent and a test for the trans-Atlantic community.” Mr. Sybiha said in a statement that Ukraine had informed the United States, European nations and international organizations about the attack.

“It is absurd that Russia attempts to justify this strike with the fake ‘Putin residence attack’ that never happened,” Mr. Sybiha wrote. Mr. Putin, he said, had fired the missile near an “E.U. and NATO border in response to his own hallucinations — this is truly a global threat.”

The statement called on countries to step up pressure on Russia’s oil industry, including cracking down on tankers that evade sanctions.

After Moscow’s first use of the Oreshnik, to strike central Ukraine in 2024, Mr. Putin touted the missile as a new development in Russia’s arms industry and a reason for the West to back away from its assistance to Ukraine.

The missile is not an entirely new design. The Pentagon said that it was based on an intercontinental missile, the RS-26 Rubezh, which was redesigned with a shorter range. Firing it was seen as a barely veiled nuclear threat: The missile is an integral part of Russia’s strategic nuclear force.

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.

When Russia first fired it, in November 2024, Mr. Putin identified the missile and said it had been launched in retaliation for a move by the United States and Britain to grant permission to Ukraine to strike with Western-made weapons deep into Russian territory.

The strike in 2024 hit an aerospace factory in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. It caused only minimal damage because it carried dummy warheads, suggesting a purely symbolic use of the weapon.

On Friday, the Ukrainian Air Force said that 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 social media that explosions had damaged infrastructure, but he did not offer specifics.

Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting.

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