Russia is firing unarmed cruise missiles that were designed to carry nuclear warheads at targets in Ukraine to try to deplete Kyiv's stocks of air defenses, a senior U.S. military official said on Tuesday.
The official, who declined to be named, was asked about a Nov. 26 assessment by Britain's military intelligence which said that Russia was "likely" removing nuclear warheads from cruise missiles and firing the unarmed munitions into Ukraine.
That intelligence update cited open source imagery showing wreckage of an air-launched cruise missile fired at Ukraine that seemed to have been designed in the 1980s as a nuclear delivery system.