Although RS-26 Rubezh can be used to deliver a thermonuclear warhead or an Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, Thursday morning's attack on the Dnipro region was non-nuclear, instead some sort of conventional warhead.
"Using these kinds of missiles, whether RS-26 or a true ICBM, in a conventional role does not make a lot of sense because of their relatively low accuracy and high cost," Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, wrote on X.
"But this kind of a strike might have a value as a signal," Podvig added.
One of the greatest Russian ballet dancers of his generation plunged to a tragic death from the fifth floor of his apartment building in St. Petersburg on Saturday. He was 39 years old.
Vladimir Shklyarov’s fatal fall has inevitably prompted an online surge of renewed interest in ‘Russian Sudden Death Syndrome,’ referring to an uncanny propensity among Kremlin critics and Russian criminal elements for meeting untimely deaths under suspicious or otherwise bizarre circumstances–very often, by falling out of windows.