Putin and Kim threats keep up pressure on Kyiv after a week of escalations

The Kremlin said Friday that its attack using a new ballistic missile was a warning to Ukraine’s “reckless” Western allies, the culmination of a week of escalating threats from President Vladimir Putin.

As new details emerged about the deepening alliance between Moscow and Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued his own nuclear threat to his southern U.S.-backed neighbor and accused Washington of fueling tensions.

The latest round of saber rattling from Putin and Kim has come during a week in which the war in Ukraine passed 1,000 days and at a pivotal moment in the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv, with Washington preparing for a change in leadership.

Still, Western officials and many analysts have sought to played down what they said was a clear effort to intimidate Kyiv and its backers.

Putin said in a televised address Thursday that he had ordered the strike with a new intermediate-range ballistic missile in response to Ukraine’s use of long-range Western weapons to hit targets inside Russia for the first time.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Friday that the message sent by this should be clear.

“Reckless actions by the West which supply missiles to Ukraine and later take part in strikes against Russia can’t be left without a Russian response,” Peskov told a daily news briefing. “Russia has shown its capabilities and the nature of our future possible responses is also rather clear.”

The U.S. said the “Oreshnik” — or “Hazel tree” — was a new, experimental type of missile based on the design of the existing RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile. Kyiv initially claimed that Russia had fired an ICBM.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried the use of the new missile on the eastern city of Dnipro as a “severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war.” He said it was a second major step toward escalation following the Kremlin’s deployment of thousands of North Korean troops.

On Friday Kim warned that due to U.S. hostility his region had never faced a greater risk of “the most destructive thermonuclear war,” according to the KCNA state news agency.

And a top official in U.S. ally South Korea shone new light on what Kim may be getting out of his Putin partnership. Russia has supplied air defense missiles and equipment to North Korea in exchange for the thousands of troops, National Security Adviser Shin Won-sik said in an interview on local TV.

The Kim-Putin alliance was likely one factor behind the decision of Washington and its allies to relax restrictions on Kyiv. And NATO, the Western military alliance bracing for a second Donald Trump presidency, said it would not stop that support in the face of Putin’s threats.

“Deploying this capability will neither change the course of the conflict nor deter NATO allies from supporting Ukraine,” said spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah,

Biden administration officials briefed Ukraine and other allies in recent days to help them prepare for Russia possibly using the new weapon, according to a U.S. official.

But the U.S. official said Russia would not be able to bully Ukraine, the U.S. or other countries helping Kyiv fend off invading Russian forces. 

“Russia may be seeking to use this capability to try to intimidate Ukraine and its supporters or generate attention in the information space, but it will not be a game changer in this conflict,” the U.S. official said.

In a sign of the danger felt on the ground, the Ukrainian parliament canceled a session and reduced staff presence due to the increased threat of a missile attack on the area housing government buildings, the country’s public broadcaster said.