Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks at the “Ukraine: Year 2024” conference, Kyiv, February 25, 2024 (Valentyn Ogirenko/ Reuters)

EA on RTE and BBC: US Finally Allows Ukraine’s Strikes Inside Russia

Wednesday’s Coverage: North Koreans “Fighting in Elite Russian Units”

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1829 GMT:

Vladimir Putin says Russia tested a new intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, in a strike on Dnipro on Thursday.

Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, suspect the Russians of using an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.

The Oreshnik missile is designed to carry nuclear weapons, but Putin said it did not carry a nuclear warhead on Thursday.

Betraying concern about US and UK permission for Ukraine to use long-range missiles inside Russia, Putin warned that Russia will deploy weapons against any country whose arms hit Russian targets.

He said the strike on Dnipro was retaliation for Ukraine’s attacks on the Bryansk region on Tuesday with a US-supplied ATACMS and on the Kursk region on Wednesday with a UK-made Storm Shadow.

UPDATE 1334 GMT:

At least 17 civilians, including two children, have been injured in a Russian attack on Kryvyi Rih in south-central Ukraine.

Two administrative buildings and a residential building were struck.

UPDATE 1331 GMT:

A “Western official” has disputed if Russia fired an ICBM for the first time in its invasion of Ukraine.

The official said that a standard ballistic missile was launched on Dnipro.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the speed and altitude of the missile indicated it was an ICBM, and “examinations are now under way”.

Zelensky spoke of Russia as Ukraine’s “insane neighbor”:

[Putin] is so afraid that he is already using new missiles. And he is looking around the world for other places to find weapons: now in Iran, now in North Korea.

It is obvious that Putin is using Ukraine as a training ground. It is obvious that Putin is afraid when there is simply a normal life around him. When people just have dignity. When the country simply wants to be and has the right to be independent.

Russia has not officially acknowledged the use of an ICBM. An unidentified caller told Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, who was briefing journalists, not to comment “on the ballistic missile strike”.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said British intelligence services are “urgently” looking into the reports.

European Union spokesperson Peter Stano said, “While we’re assessing the full facts, it’s obvious that such an attack would mark yet another clear escalation from the side of Putin.”

UPDATE 0858 GMT:

Russia has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile on Ukraine for the first time in its 33-month invasion.

The ICBM was part of an attack on Dnipro in south-central Ukraine. The Russians also fired a Kh-47M2 Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile, and seven Kh-101 cruise missiles.

Six of the Kh-101s were downed. However, a rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, an industrial enterprise, two houses, and nine garages were damaged.

Two civilians were injured, and one was hospitalized.

The ICBM was launched from the Astrakhan region in southern Russia.

UPDATE 0807 GMT:

The US Embassy in Kyiv has reopened, a day after it was closed as a precaution against possible Russian airstrikes.

UPDATE 0801 GMT:

A Russian court has sentenced Alexey Pokazanyev, a history and social studies teacher, to three years in prison for “justifying terrorism”.

Prosecutors claimed that Pokazanyev, 30, in a class of ninth-grade students, “commented on events related to a terrorist attack in the form of an explosion on the Crimean bridge” and made remarks “justifying an attempt on the life of the President of the Russian Federation”.

The court did not disclose the specific statements, and the judge delivered the sentence after a single hearing.

UPDATE 0753 GMT:

The Biden Administration has notified Congress of its intention to write off $4.65 billion of Ukraine’s debt.

The amount is half of the $9 billion provided by the US as part of a $60.8 billion aid package approved by Congress in April.

The State Department said the write-off “will help Ukraine win, meeting the national interests of the United States and its partners in the EU, G7+, and NATO”.

UPDATE 0728 GMT:

At least three civilians have been killed and at least 22 injured by Russian attacks across Ukraine in the past 24 hours.

In the Donetsk region in the east, one person was slain and eight injured. In the Kherson region in the south, two civilians were killed and 10, including a child, wounded.

The Russians attacked the city of Dnipro in south-central Ukraine early Thursday with ballistic, cruise, and air-launched Kinzhal missiles. An industrial enterprise and a rehabilitation center for people with disabilities were damaged, and two fires broke out in the city.

No casualties have been reported so far.

UPDATE 0717 GMT:

Using British-made Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia for the first time, Ukraine has reportedly struck a command headquarters in the village of Maryno in the Kursk region.

Videos circulated by pro-Russian war bloggers indicate that up to 12 missiles struck the headquarters. Ukrainian media reported that the site may have been used by North Korean as well as Russian officers.

The deployment of the Storm Shadows was expected after the US, which had vetoed their use for months, lifted the ban on the launch of American-made ATACMS inside Russia.

See also Ukraine War, Day 999: US Lifts Ban on Kyiv’s Strikes Inside Russia

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Setting out lines for any negotiations to end Moscow’s 33-month invasion, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, “We cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian.”

In an interview with Fox TV, Zelensky was asked if Ukraine could give up territory for peace. He replied, “That is about those territories…occupied by Putin before the full-scale invasion, since 2014. Legally, we are not acknowledging that, we are not adopting that.”

Russia seized the Crimea peninsula in 2014 and supported separatists in parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine. During its full-scale invasion, it has also overrun parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in southern Ukraine. In September 2022, Vladimir Putin declared “annexation” of all four regions.

Ukraine liberated some areas in the regions in autumn 2022, but Russia is waging a 13-month offensive which has advanced in Donetsk.

Zelensky explained in the interview that, while fighting in the other four regions, Ukraine can only regain Crimea through negotiations:

We cannot spend dozens of, thousands of our people so that they perish for the sake of Crimea coming back….We understand that Crimea can be brought back diplomatically.

The President acknowledged that, amid the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine and massive missile and drone strikes across the country:

We are in a really difficult period, but the most difficult was the first days of the war.

This period depends on our unity in Ukraine. It will be dangerous if we lose unity in Europe and, what is most important, unity between Ukraine and the United States.

Zelensky explained his criticism of last Friday’s hour-long phone call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Vladimir Putin: “You will have talking after you know what will be. What did the Chancellor get from the phone call? Nothing.”

In a message to Donald Trump, the President assessed:

Putin is weaker than the United States of America

The President of the USA has the strength, authorities, and weapons, and he can decrease the price for the energy resources.

Asked if Trump can influence Putin to end the invasion, “Yes, he can. He is much more stronger than Putin.”

In his nightly address to the nation, Zelensky thanked the Biden Administration for its latest military aid, including anti-personnel mines.