MOSCOW (Dispatches) - Russia said on Wednesday that Ukraine had struck a military airfield on the Azov Sea with six U.S.-made ATACMS ballistic missiles, a move that could prompt Moscow to launch another experimental intermediate-range hypersonic missile at Ukraine.
Russia’s defense ministry said two of the missiles fired by Ukraine were shot down by a Pantsir missile defense system and the rest were destroyed by electronic warfare.
“On the morning of December 11, 2024, the Kyiv regime launched a missile strike with Western precision weapons at the Taganrog military airfield in the Rostov region,” the defense ministry said.
“This attack by Western long-range weapons will not go unanswered and appropriate measures will be taken,” it said.
Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as «Oreshnik”, or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Nov. 21 in what President Vladimir Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with U.S. and British missiles.
A U.S. official said on Wednesday that Russia could launch another hypersonic ballistic missile in Ukraine in the coming days, but Washington does not consider the Oreshnik weapon a game-changer in the war.
After approval from the administration of President Joe Biden, Ukraine struck Russia with six U.S.-made ATACMS on Nov. 19 and with British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made HIMARS on Nov. 21.
Putin, after those attacks, said that the Ukraine war was escalating towards a global conflict after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to hit Russia with their weapons, and warned the West that Moscow could strike back.
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its final and most dangerous phase as Moscow’s forces advance at their fastest pace since the early weeks of the conflict.
On Wednesday, Russian troops destroyed or captured several Ukrainian positions near the eastern city of Pokrovsk,.
After months of accelerating advances toward Pokrovsk, Moscow’s forces are now as close as 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from the southern outskirts of the city, according to Ukraine’s DeepState, which maps the front lines using open sources.
“As a result of prolonged clashes, two of our positions were destroyed, one was lost.  
Currently, measures are being taken to restore positions,” Nazar Voloshyn, Ukraine’s military spokesman for the eastern front, said in televised comments.
Pokrovsk, situated about 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the boundary of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, has for months been the area of the fiercest battles in Russia’s 33-month-old full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The fall of Pokrovsk, an important logistics center for the Ukrainian military in the east, would amount to the biggest military setback for Kyiv in months.
The city also hosts Ukraine’s only domestic coking coal supplier for its once-giant steel industry.
The International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday said that a drone hit and severely damaged an official vehicle of the agency on the road to Ukraine’s Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Tuesday.