Russia Tests Nuclear-Capable ICBM; Kyiv Triples Drone Target
Russia’s defence ministry announced the successful test of a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile — days after the CIA director’s Moscow visit to warn against testing NATO — as President Zelensky ordered long-range drone strikes on Russia tripled to a thousand a day. Western officials assess Moscow is escalating rhetoric while avoiding war with NATO, and estimate Russia is losing six thousand more troops a month than it can recruit.
An ICBM test announced with fanfare days after a private American warning is an answer of sorts — the strategic-signalling equivalent of replying to a quiet word with a shout — but the harder numbers point the other way: a recruitment deficit of six thousand a month, over a hundred thousand men crossing into Georgia in a week amid mobilisation rumours, and Kyiv planning for a Russia that must conscript six hundred thousand more to keep pace. Zelensky’s thousand-drones-a-day order industrialises the refinery campaign that has been quietly working all month. Between the missile theatre and the drone arithmetic sits the CIA channel, still warm. Watch whether mobilisation rumours harden — conscription is the decision Putin has spent three years avoiding.