The Russian military has launched a state-of-the-art intermediate-range ballistic missile against a Ukrainian target, President Vladimir Putin said in a public address on Thursday.

As part of what the president called a “combat test,” the hypersonic missile, dubbed ‘Oreshnik’ (‘Hazel’), successfully struck a military industrial facility in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk (known as Dnipro in Ukraine), Putin added.

The strike was a response to Ukrainian attacks on military facilities located on internationally recognized Russian territory, the president stated. Kiev’s forces launched the strikes on Tuesday and Thursday, using US-made ATACMS and HIMARS systems as well as British-made Storm Shadow missiles, he said. 

The president also vowed to publicly announce any future strikes against the Ukrainian targets involving the ‘Oreshnik’ system “for humanitarian reasons” to let civilians leave a potentially dangerous zone. The announcements would not affect the effectiveness of the strikes, he added. A ballistic missile travelling at between 2.5 and 3 kilometers per second, or 10 times faster than the speed of sound, cannot be countered with any existing air defense systems, Putin said.

Earlier, international media reported that Kiev had received approval from Washington and London for the use of Western-made long-range systems for strikes deep into Russia. 

One of the attacks resulted in several casualties at a Russian command center in the Kursk Region, but failed to disrupt its operations, the president said, adding that such developments have drastically changed the nature of the Ukraine conflict, making it a more “global” one.

According to Putin, the response involved a “hypersonic ballistic missile strike with a non-nuclear payload.” The missile struck “one of the biggest industrial complexes, which has been famous even since Soviet times and still produces missiles and other weapons.” The president was apparently referring to Yuzhmash – Ukraine’s state-owned aerospace manufacturer, which it inherited from the Soviet Union. 

The Ukrainian Air Force confirmed on Thursday that the city of Dnepropetrovsk was targeted in a major Russian missile strike, involving various types of weapons. The Ukrainian military stated that Moscow had used “an intercontinental ballistic missile” as part of the strike – a claim that was disputed even by Washington. 

According to Ukraine’s Air Force, the strike also involved a hypersonic Russian Kinzhal missile and seven Kh-101 cruise missiles. Ukrainian air defense forces claim to have shot down six of the cruise missiles. The Ukrainian military also said they did not possess any information on casualties or damage resulting from the strike at the time the statement was released.

The “combat test” came in response to the “aggressive actions of the NATO member states against Russia,” Putin said in his speech. Moscow has voluntarily made a unilateral commitment not to deploy intermediate range missiles anywhere for as long as similar US weapons are not deployed to any region of the world either, the president stated. 

The very development of such systems was a response to Washington’s plans to produce and deploy similar systems to Europe and the Asia-Pacific, Putin said, pointing to Washington’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019. 

“The issue of the further deployment of short and medium-range missiles will be decided in response to the actions of the US and its satellites,” the Russian president said. 

Moscow will also continue the “combat tests” of its newest missile system, Putin warned, adding that Russia’s criteria for choosing targets for such tests will be determined by a security threat assessment. Moscow believes it has a right to target the military facilities of those nations that allow its weapons to be used against Russia, the president stated. 

“In case of an escalation, … we will deliver a decisive mirror-like response,” he said. 

Russia is still ready to “resolve all the differences in a peaceful way,” the president said, adding that Moscow is still “also ready for any developments” and one should not doubt that “there will always be a response.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/608003-ukraine-putin-oreshnik-missile/

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“It’s hard to do cartoons without combat tests…”

         Gus Leonisky

The latest round of US sanctions against Russian financial institutions, which specifically target Gazprombank, is an attempt to block Russia’s gas supplies to the EU, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Friday. The lender is Russia’s primary bank for energy-related transactions.

Peskov warned that Moscow would respond to restrictions with countermeasures, though he did not specify what they would entail.

The Kremlin spokesman’s remarks follow an announcement by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday, which said Gazprombank and six of its international subsidiaries had been added to its sanctions blacklist. Gazprombank had already been sanctioned by the UK and Canada shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. However, the US had previously avoided placing restrictions on the lender as it was used by EU states to pay for Russian gas.

When asked whether the Kremlin viewed sanctions on Gazprombank as an attempt to jeopardize supplies of Russian gas to Europe, and whether Moscow planned any response, Peskov replied: “The answer is ‘Yes’ to both questions.”

He noted that Russian authorities were already working on ways to alleviate the problems that the new restrictions could cause Russia and its foreign gas buyers.

“Of course, we’ll find options. It is impossible to introduce completely blocking measures against a country like Russia. It may take some time, but a solution will still be found,” Peskov said.

The new measures mean Gazprombank can no longer carry out transactions that involve the dollar-based financial system. Gazprombank earlier said that sanctions would not affect its operations within Russia, but warned that its UnionPay cards may stop working outside the country.

Apart from Gazprombank, the new US restrictions also targeted more than 50 small-to-medium Russian lenders, some 40 securities registrars, and 15 financial officials.

After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the EU declared the elimination of its reliance on Russian energy to be its top priority. Many member states, including Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, the Netherlands, and Denmark, voluntarily halted their imports. However, several EU nations, including Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Italy continue to rely on Russian gas to meet their energy needs, and have not stopped buying the commodity despite pressure from peers within the bloc.

Moscow has slammed Western sanctions as illegal, and noted that they keep backfiring on the countries that impose them. Russia has also been gradually moving away from the dollar in trade, switching to transactions using national currencies with most of its international partners.

https://www.rt.com/business/608060-us-sanctions-russian-gas-eu/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

“It’s hard to do cartoons without combat tests…”

         Gus Leonisky

Warsaw and Kiev were both content with Berlin’s imports of Russian natural gas as long as they continued to profit from it, former Chancellor Angela Merkel stated, defending her decision not to deprive the German economy of cheap energy.

In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine published on Friday, Merkel was asked why she neither armed Ukraine nor strengthened Germany’s defense capabilities, nor weaned her country off Russian gas during her tenure.

“Many important aspects are being forgotten today: for example, Ukraine and Poland were not fundamentally opposed to our import of Russian gas as long as it passed through their territory and they received transit fees for it,” she pointed out.

Merkel defended her decision not to halt imports via the Nord Stream pipelines, arguing that it would have made little difference if Berlin had stopped buying gas from Moscow back in 2014.

“It would have been the same back then if we had broken off all economic ties,” she said, pointing to “other countries” that continue to buy Russian gas to this day.

“I saw it as one of my tasks to secure cheap gas for the German economy. We can now see the consequences of high energy prices for our country,” she added.

The German economy has been in recession since 2023, contracting by 0.3% this year and projected to shrink further by 0.1% in 2024, according to the European Commission’s economic forecast released last week. Rising costs and weak economic performance have led to soaring rates of corporate bankruptcy in the country, Der Spiegel reported earlier this week.

Merkel served as Federal Chancellor from 2005 to 2021 during the early stages of the Ukraine conflict, when Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia following the 2014 Western-backed Maidan coup in Kiev. She was one of the guarantors of the failed 2014-15 Minsk agreements, which she later described as merely “an attempt to give Ukraine time” and strengthen Kiev.

GUSNOTE: WHY? AT THIS STAGE, THE MINSK AGREEMENTS WERE SIGNED BY UKRAINE BECAUSE IT WAS LOSING FAST AGAINST THE DONBASS REBELS. REVISIST THIS HISTORY...

The first two underwater Nord Stream pipelines were launched in 2012 and supplied about 16% of the EU’s natural gas needs by 2018, meeting half of Germany’s annual demand by 2021. Two additional pipelines were built but never became operational, as Berlin halted certification of Nord Stream 2 amid pressure from the US shortly before Russia's military operation in Ukraine. Three of the four pipelines were sabotaged in September 2022 in a series of mysterious explosions.

The EU still receives approximately 5% of its gas imports from Russia via Ukraine’s gas transit network, according to Brussels-based economic think tank Bruegel. The transit agreement between Moscow and Kiev is set to expire on December 31.

IT IS LIKELY THAT RUSSIA WILL TURN OFF THE GAS FLOW ON JANUARY ONE 2025 AND STOP GIVING UKRAINE TRANSIT CASH UNDER THIS HONOURED AGREEMENT... THIS WILL BE ANOTHER 5 PER CENT NAIL IN THE EUROPEAN COFFIN....

https://www.rt.com/news/608080-merkel-ukraine-poland-gas/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

“It’s hard to do cartoons without combat tests…”

         Gus Leonisky

SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/business/608065-bosch-layoffs-plan-germany/