WATCH: Pentagon holds press conference as US warns Russia could use new missile against Ukraine

WASHINGTON (AP) A U.S. intelligence assessment has concluded that Russia could again use its deadly new intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine in the “coming days,” a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Watch the Pentagon press briefing in the player above.

The Oreshnik missile is seen by U.S. officials more as an attempt at intimidation than as a way to change the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss this sensitive information.

The threat comes as both sides struggle to gain battlefield advantage in a nearly three-year war that President-elect Donald Trump has promised to end, and just days after states The United States has pledged nearly $1 billion in security aid to Ukraine. Other Western allies have suggested that negotiations to end the war could begin this winter.

According to the official, Russia has only a handful of Oreshnik missiles and they carry a smaller warhead than other missiles Russia routinely launches at Ukraine.

Russia first fired the weapon in a November 21 missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Surveillance camera video of the strike showed huge fireballs piercing the darkness and crashing into the ground with astonishing speed.

Hours after the attack on the military installation, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the rare step of speaking on national television to boast about the new hypersonic missile. He warned the West that its next use could be against Ukraine's NATO allies, who have allowed kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.

The attack came two days after Putin signed a revised version of Russia's nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. The doctrine allows for a possible nuclear response from Moscow, even in the event of a conventional attack on Russia by any nation backed by a nuclear power.

This strike also came shortly after President Joe Biden agreed to ease restrictions on Ukraine's use of long-range American-made weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory, and just one day after the United States announced it was giving Ukraine landmines to help slow down the Russian battlefield. advances.

“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against the military installations of countries that allow the use of their weapons against our installations,” Putin said at the time.

The Pentagon said the Oreshnik was an type of intermediate-range ballistic missile, or IRBM, based on the Russian RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. It was the first time such a weapon was used in combat.

Intermediate-range missiles can travel between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,400 miles). Such weapons were banned under a Soviet-era treaty that Washington and Moscow abandoned in 2019. Fighting has intensified in the bitter war as Russia and Ukraine scramble to gain the upper hand in upcoming negotiations. Trump's inauguration next month has also raised questions about the level of support the United States will continue to provide Kiev.

Trump has insisted in recent days that Russia and Ukraine immediately reach a cease-fire and said Ukraine should probably prepare to receive less U.S. military aid.

Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and put an end to this madness,” Trump wrote on social media last weekend, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, announced a $988 million long-term aid package last weekend. This funding comes on top of an additional $725 million in U.S. military aid, including anti-drone systems and HIMARS munitions, announced early last week that would be drawn from Pentagon stockpiles to reach more quickly the front lines. The United States has provided Ukraine with more than $62 billion in military aid since Russia's invasion in February 2022.

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