WASHINGTON — President Vladimir Putin’s launch of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile into Ukraine two weeks ago was not in response to the recent US decision to allow Kyiv to strike deeper into Russia, a top Kremlin military officer told the chief of the Joint Staff in a secret call last week.
Chief of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov held a classified call with Chief of the Joint Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown last week, just six days after Moscow launched a new missile dubbed Oreshnik — Russian for hazelnut tree — to strike a facility in Dnipro, Ukraine, the Pentagon confirmed to The Post on Thursday.
While Putin claimed the blast came as a reaction to the US policy shift last month to allow Ukraine to launch longer-range ATACMS missiles into Russia, unnamed officials told the New York Times that Gerasimov in the conversation said that the missile launch had been planned long before the US agreed to let Ukraine strike deeper into Russia.
The call happened Nov. 27 “following a request by the Russian Ministry of Defense,” Joint Staff spokesperson Navy Capt. Jereal Dorsey said in a statement.
“This was the first time the leaders spoke since Gen. Brown became Chairman,” Dorsey said. “The leaders discussed a number of global and regional security issues to include the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.”
While it’s not unusual for Russia and the US to hold deconfliction talks, such conversations are typically announced shortly after they occur. They also commonly occur before major ballistic missile launches to avoid miscalculations that could lead to nuclear war.
“At the request of Gen. Gerasimov, Gen. Brown agreed to not proactively announce the call,” Dorsey said.
The Pentagon did not disclose why Gerasimov did not want Brown to announce their conversation earlier.
Though the Oreshnik was carrying conventional weapons, it has the capacity to hold nuclear warheads and concerned NATO members, including the US, when it was launched.
“This was new type of lethal capability that was deployed on the battlefield, so that was certainly of concern,” Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said at the time.
