Robert Greenall
BBC News

On Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a few details about the new powerful missile which hit Dnipro earlier in the day – calling it Oreshnik, or hazel tree.

He said it travelled at a speed of Mach 10, in other words 10 times the speed of sound, and that there were “no ways of counteracting this weapon”.

But beyond Putin’s explanation, there appears to be no clear consensus about what it actually is.

Ukrainian military intelligence insists it was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) known as Kedr (cedar). One Russian military analyst told Izvestiya newspaper it could be a scaled down version of this.

US officials, though, say the launch of such a missile would have triggered a nuclear alert in Washington.

Meanwhile another expert tells the same newspaper the missile could have been created on the basis of the shorter-range Iskander missiles – already commonly used on Ukraine – but with a new-generation solid fuel engine.

If, as Putin says, it is an intermediate-range missile, its range would be 2,500-3,000km (1,550-1,860 miles), potentially extending to 5,000km. This would put almost all of Europe within range.