NYT: Moscow planned to strike Ukraine with “Oreshnik” long before the US permission to strike ATACMS deep into the Russian Federation

On November 27, the Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov called Charles Brown, Jr., the chief military adviser of the US President Joe Biden. This happened for the first time in more than two years.

According to The New York Times, Gerasimov told the American that Moscow planned to strike Ukraine with an “Oreshnik” ballistic missile long before Washington decided to allow the Ukrainian military to fire American ATACMS missiles deep into Russia.

In his speech after the strike, Putin stated that the strike was allegedly a response to Ukraineʼs use of American and British weapons to strike Russia.

Gerasimov and Brown Jr. also "discussed a number of global and regional security issues," including the war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. The Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces asked Brown not to announce the call in advance.

What preceded

On November 19, the US State Department confirmed Ukraineʼs permission to fire American missiles deep into Russia. On the same day, a number of media outlets reported that Ukraine used American long-range ATACMS missiles for the first time to strike Russia — at a warehouse with ammunition in the Bryansk region. And the next day Bloomberg wrote that Ukraine attacked Russia for the first time with Storm Shadow long-range missiles.

On November 21, 2024, Russian troops attacked the Dnipro. At the time, the Ukrainian Air Force said that the Russians had hit the city with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). On the evening of November 21, Putin announced that Russia struck Dnipro with an alleged "newest medium-range system" called "Oreshnik", namely a ballistic missile with non-nuclear hypersonic equipment. American officials believe that the Russian Federation used an "experimental" medium-range ballistic missile.

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