New Russian missile fired at Ukraine carried warheads without explosives: sources

A new ballistic missile fired by Russia at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last week carried multiple warheads but no explosives, and caused limited damage, two senior Ukrainian government sources said.

Their comments appeared to confirm the Kremlin’s own description of the weapon’s use last Thursday as a warning to the West after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to fire their missiles into Russia.

The two sources provided more details about the new weapon as Western experts try to learn more about what US officials say was an experimental intermediate-range missile.

Intermediate-range ballistic missiles are typically meant to be used for long-range nuclear strikes on targets thousands of kilometres away. One of the sources said the missile was carrying dummy warheads and described the damage caused as “quite small”.

The second source said: “In this case, (the missile) was without explosives … There were no types of explosions like we expected. There was something, but it was not huge”.