Why though? A warning to the west?
Cause last time I checked, Russia and Ukraine are on the same continent, making this a huge waste.
Probably a warning in response to letting Ukraine use western missiles deep into russian territory.
“deep into russian territory” is quite an exaggeration. Biden only okayed it for the Kursk and neighbouring regions.
The U.S. official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the decision, said the U.S. is allowing Ukraine to use the weapons to target in and around Kursk — the same region where some 10,000 North Korean troops were recently deployed, according to the U.S. and its allies.
that still doesn’t explain using an icbm against a nation you share a border with. there’s some message russia is sending. it’s either “don’t forget, we have icbms and they’re operational” or it’s “we are running low on standard missiles and have to fight weird”
Don’t let the name fool you, ICBMs not only have a much larger range but they also (generally) have higher payloads and they’re designed around ‘user servicable’ and swappable warheads.
They’re sending a message and it isn’t “we could hit you even if you were thousands of kilometers away”, it’s “we could bolt a nuke to this bad boy”
My guess is the latter, Iran and North Korea aren’t exactly making state of the art weaponry. And Russia has burned through most of its rusted out and repainted armament at this point. That leaves either new weapons, scuffed imports from “shithole”-class countries, or weird weapons.
At any rate, nuking your nextdoor neighbors and having the radiation potentially drifting over parts of your country, potentially even your capital (yield dependent) seems like a stupid idea. Not to mention it ruining their “trophy” land that they illegally acquired.
Funnily enough, it is not according to Russia. The definition of “continent” is almost completely arbritrary anyway, and exactly where you draw the line between Europe and Asia - or if you draw it at all - is probably the fuzziest bit of all. Russia and many other countries just consider Eurasia to be one continent
