A Russian cruise missile, whose secret development led President Trump to abandon a nuclear arms control pact with Moscow in his first term, has been used to attack Ukraine in recent months, according to Kyiv’s foreign minister.
Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha is the first to confirm that Russia has used the ground-launched 9M729 missile in combat, firing the missile at Ukraine 23 times since August and twice in 2022, Reuters reported.
The 9M729, which can carry a nuclear or conventional warhead and is believed to have a range of more than 1,500 miles, prompted Trump to pull the United States from the more than 30-year-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019.
The treaty, agreed to by the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union in 1987, led to the elimination of 2,692 nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km and is credited with helping end the Cold War.
U.S. officials had publicly accused Russia of violating the treaty since 2014, during the Obama administration. But the Trump administration formally pulled the U.S. from the agreement in August 2019 after it declared that the 9M729 was in breach of the treaty and could fly far beyond the treaty’s limit of 500 km, which Russia denied.
Critics at the time worried that the move, which produced no proper follow-on agreement, would spur an arms race.
That concern appears to have come to fruition, with Trump earlier this week directing the Pentagon to immediately start testing nuclear weapons on an equal basis to Russia and China. That came after Moscow said it had successfully tested the Burevestnik cruise missile on Oct. 21 and a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone on Tuesday.
Russia’s use of the 9M729 includes an Oct. 5 flight of more than 1,200 km before it hit Ukraine, a source told Reuters.
“Russia’s use of the INF-banned 9M729 against Ukraine in the past months demonstrates (President Vladimir) Putin’s disrespect to the United States and President Trump’s diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Sybiha said in a statement.
Ukraine for months has pressed the Trump administration to help boost Ukraine’s long-range firepower via U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles, arguing it would help bring Russia to the table for peace talks.
But Moscow, which began its war in Ukraine in February 2022, has warned Washington that providing the missiles would be a dangerous escalation. Trump has said the transfer would be dangerous, difficult and impractical, due to the training needed to use the weapons.
