Ukraine’s Air Force said shortly before midnight on January 8 that it had detected a threat of a possible launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile from a Russian strategic nuclear test site. Soon afterward, explosions were heard near Lviv in western Ukraine, though Kyiv did not specify whether they were caused by a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and launched specifically from that facility. If confirmed, the use of such a weapon—even with a conventional or training warhead—would send a troubling signal to Ukraine and its Western allies and point to a further escalation by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to Ukraine’s Air Force, the threat was identified at the Kapustin Yar test range near the Caspian Sea, the service said in a statement early on Friday. If the strike near Lviv was indeed carried out by a missile launched from that site, it would mark only the second instance during the war in which a launch originated from a strategic nuclear forces testing ground located far beyond Ukraine’s borders. In 2024, Russia had already used against Ukraine a new intermediate-range missile—known as Oreshnik—which was also launched from Kapustin Yar.
Reports of the missile threat and the nighttime explosions came against a backdrop of mounting tension: Ukraine rejected Moscow’s demands to cede territory as part of peace talks, while the Trump administration removed Russia’s ally—Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
After such an intermediate-range missile was fired at Ukraine in November 2024, Vladimir Putin publicly identified the weapon and laid out his reasons for its use. He said the launch was retaliation for the United States and Britain granting Ukraine permission to use Western-made weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory.
Early Friday morning, Ukraine’s Air Force said the threat of a launch from Russia had been detected at about 11:30 p.m. on Thursday—before explosions were heard in the Lviv region. Lviv’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, wrote on Telegram that the blasts damaged infrastructure, without specifying which facilities were affected.
When Russia used the Oreshnik ballistic missile in 2024, it struck an aerospace plant in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The damage was minimal, however, because the missile carried training warheads—pointing to the largely symbolic nature of the strike.
This time, the explosions that followed the warning occurred much closer to the border with Poland—a member of NATO and the European Union—potentially signaling an intent to demonstrate a more immediate threat.
After that strike, Putin presented the weapon as a new achievement of Russia’s defense industry and as an argument that the West should scale back its support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion launched in 2022, which later settled into a protracted phase marked by minimal territorial gains for Russia.
The Pentagon said the missile is based on the RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental missile, which was redesigned with a shorter range. It carries multiple warheads that separate in flight before descending on a target. Ukraine has no air defense systems capable of intercepting such a missile.