From a call with Putin to an experimental strike, a dramatic week transforms the war in Ukraine

The past seven days have fundamentally changed Ukraine’s long conflict, and at a breakneck pace ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration in January. The week marks a seismic escalation that nevertheless risks fading fast in the fatigue swamping the war, so it is worthy of a recap.

The White House publicly authorized Ukraine Sunday to fire missiles it supplied into Russia proper, which it swiftly did Monday. Moscow responded by using an experimental medium-range missile, with hypersonic speeds and a multiple warhead system usually reserved for nuclear payloads, to strike Dnipro Thursday. Putin claimed the “Oreshnik” could evade all Western air defense.

Both sides dubbed each other reckless - and by sides, I mean the US and Russia. For this is fast becoming a war where Washington desperately seeks to alter Ukraine’s downward curve on the front lines, and Russia, the aggressor here from the start, edges towards riskier ways of restoring the deterrent value they have lost in the last three years.

Neither is likely to get into direct conflict with the other, but instead become more intimately involved in Ukraine’s increasingly global fight.

It is a rapid deterioration. Seven days ago, fury surrounded unexpected talk of peace.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz unilaterally rang Russian President Vladimir Putin, ending a two-year isolation of the Kremlin head from major Western leaders. Scholz was seeking to curry favor with pro-Russian voters in eastern Germany ahead of a general election, but justified his call by saying that if Trump was going to talk to Moscow, Europe should too. Ukraine and Poland were publicly angry; France and the UK seemed to more quietly seethe.

It is unlikely the White House decision on weapons stemmed from Scholz’s call, and indeed it said President Joe Biden’s reversal of months of delay over approving the missile use inside Russia was fueled by North Korean troops joining Russia’s ranks. Similarly, Putin’s decision to launch the Oreshnik missile was likely Moscow stepping up another rung on a carefully prepared ladder of escalation. Moscow and Washington have telegraphed these moves for months, even if they are still a little taken aback on how their adversary actually made them this week.

 

The exact specifics of the Oreshnik seem key to Putin’s message. A lot remains unclear, but most assessments, and Putin’s own comments, agree this is a new missile, likely hypersonic, not nuclear (this time), but able to deliver multiple warheads in a fashion normally reserved for nuclear payloads. Putin said that at 3 km per second, its speed meant all Western air defenses were useless. US and NATO officials called the device medium-range and “experimental,” comments that initially sound like they sought to downplay its significance but may actually point to a wider rift with Moscow.

In 2019, President Trump pulled out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, the landmark act limiting the development of such weapons, accusing Russia of violating it. Western officials’ insistence this missile - which appeared nuclear capable - was “intermediate” in range, was perhaps a nod to Russia’s continued pursuit of such weapons outside of the now defunct INF. Perhaps this was a nod to Trump too that Moscow has been busy making the weapons his first term claimed they were.

Ukraine deemed the device the “Kedr”, apparently first alluded to in Russian state media in 2021. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence, said Friday it was a “medium-range ballistic missile, a nuclear weapons carrier. The fact that they used it in a non-nuclear version… is a warning that they have completely lost their minds.” Budanov said Ukraine assessed that two prototypes of the Kedr were made by October, but insisted “it is not a serial product, thank God.”

The weeks ahead will show if the Oreshnik is a singular message or a new tactic. Its use injected some greater anxiety in Kyiv, after the snap closure of the US Embassy Wednesday citing an aerial threat, fueling the fear Moscow is reaching for tools in its kit that it had kept for a final existential fight with a great power.

Yet the week’s most troubling news is perhaps away from the loud geopolitical brawling and ominous fireworks over Dnipro.

The United Kingdom’s Defence Intelligence, normally a staunch advocate of the Ukrainian military, said Thursday the front line was more “unstable” than at any time since the invasion. That is a euphemism for Kyiv’s forces struggling across the front and matches the persistently gloomy reports CNN has had from military and open sources.

It is bleak in every direction. South of Kharkiv, Russia is advancing near the city of Kupiansk. Supply lines are at threat around the eastern Donbas region. Even southern Zaporizhzhia seems under greater pressure, and Moscow is persistently trying to push Ukraine out of its Kursk border region.

The Biden administration may rush in anti-personnel mines and announce more ammunition, but the changes are happening right now, across trenches where snow is settling. They look set, in the most optimistic reading, to at least give Moscow the upper hand territorially for a bleak winter.

Trump’s presidency expedited talk of talks. Yet the immediate response has been a headlong rush to exacerbate the hot war ahead of its possible freeze. The acute risk is this lurch forwards to a better negotiating position, develops an unstoppable momentum of its own.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly named the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence. His name is Kyrylo Budanov.