Brazilian authorities have indicted ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, accusing him of “full knowledge” of a 2022 plot to kill his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and overturn the results of the presidential election.

Earlier this week, Brazilian police arrested five people, including a former adviser to Bolsonaro, over the alleged plots. The coup plotters also envisaged the assassination of Lula’s Vice President Geraldo Alckmin and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court said in its arrest order.

In October 2022, Lula narrowly beat Bolsonaro in the presidential election. Bolsonaro’s supporters rejected the results and rioted in the capital Brasilia, storming government buildings on January 8, 2023.

According to the police warrant carried out on Tuesday, Bolsonaro allegedly met with officials from the army and navy as well as the minister of defense in December 2022 to present a document detailing the legal framework that would keep him in power.

The former president has repeatedly denied allegations of attempting a coup. His son, Flavio Bolsonaro, who is a senator in the Brazilian Congress, suggested in a post on X that the five suspects arrested this week had not committed a crime.

“As disgusting as it may be to think about killing someone, it is not a crime. And for there to be an attempt, the execution must be interrupted by some situation beyond the control of the perpetrators. Which does not appear to have happened,” he wrote.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Russia launched a new non-nuclear ballistic missile with medium range on Ukraine’s Dnipro region on Thursday, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said in a televised statement, marking another significant escalation in the 1,000-day-old war.

According to US and Western officials, the ballistic missile carried multiple warheads, which may be the first time such a weapon has been used in war.

At least three people were injured in the attack, the head of the Dnipro’s military administration had said earlier. A number of buildings were also damaged.

Here’s what we know.

What is Russia saying?

Russian President Vladimir Putin said a Russian strike in Ukraine was carried out by a new non-nuclear ballistic missile, which has a medium range.

“In response to the use of American and British long-range weapons, on November 21 of this year the Russian armed forces launched a combined strike on one of the facilities of the Ukrainian defense industry,” Putin said in a televised statement on Thursday.

“In combat conditions, one of the newest Russian medium-range missile systems was also tested,” Putin said, apparently referring to the strike on Dnipro. “In this case, with a ballistic missile in non-nuclear hypersonic equipment. Our missilemen called it ‘Oreshnik.’ The tests were successful. The launch goal was achieved.”

A medium-range missile can travel between 1,000 kilometers and 3,000 kilometers (620 miles to 1,860 miles), according to the Center for Arms Control and Anti-Proliferation.

Putin also said that Moscow considers itself entitled to use weapons against military targets belonging to countries that allow their weapons to be used against Russia. He said that Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked targets in Russia’s Bryansk region with six US-made ATACMS missiles on Tuesday and later fired British/French Storm Shadow systems on the Kursk region.

“From that moment, as we have repeatedly emphasized earlier, the regionally provoked conflict in Ukraine took on elements of a global nature,” Putin said, adding that “using such weapons without the direct involvement of military specialists from the countries that produce these weapons is impossible.”

“We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military objects of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our objects, and in the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond just as decisively and in kind,” he added.

What is Ukraine saying?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia’s use of the new missile is “a clear and severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war.”

In a post on X on Thursday, Zelensky accused Russia of “a cynical violation of the UN Charter” and taking a “second step toward escalation” of the conflict, adding that the first escalatory step was involving North Korean troops in the war.

The Ukrainian leader also emphasized Kyiv’s right to strike Russia with long-range weapons “under international law,” adding that Putin is “testing” Kyiv’s partners with his actions and called on world leaders to put pressure on Moscow.

“A lack of tough reactions to Russia’s actions sends a message that such behavior is acceptable,” he said. “Russia must be forced into real peace, which can only be achieved through strength.”

Ukraine’s foreign ministry echoed Zelensky’s comments, emphasizing Kyiv’s right to strike Russia with long-range weapons.

“Ukraine has used long-range capabilities against targets in its occupied territories many times, but Putin started to fuss only when targets in Russia were hit. So Putin knows the difference between the actual Russian territory and the territory he tries to steal from Ukraine,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said in a Thursday post on ‘X.’

Ukraine’s air force earlier accused Russia of launching an intercontinental ballistic missile at Dnipro at around 5 a.m. local time, from the Astrakhan region of southern Russia, without offering further detail. However, two Western officials disputed Ukraine’s assessment, saying that although the missile launched by Russia was likely a ballistic missile, it was not an intercontinental one.

Ukraine’s military also said that an X-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missile was launched alongside seven cruise missiles in the attack, adding that all but one of the cruise missiles were shot down. “The other missiles didn’t cause significant consequences,” the military said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky framed the strike was evidence that Putin is “so afraid, he is already using new missiles.”

“Today, our crazy neighbor has once again shown who he really is and how he despises dignity, freedom, and human life in general,” Zelensky said in a video posted to Telegram before Putin’s televised address.

What is an MIRV?

The missile fired at Dnipro carried multiple warheads, according to two US officials and one Western official, in what may be the first time such a weapon has been used in war.

The weapon, known as a Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV), carries a series of warheads that can each target a specific location, allowing one ballistic missile to launch a larger attack.

MIRVs were developed during the Cold War to permit the delivery of multiple nuclear warheads with a single launch. The Minuteman III, which is the US intercontinental ballistic missile, is armed with MIRVs. The Russian missile attack on Dnipro was not armed with nuclear warheads, but it used a weapon designed for nuclear delivery to instead launch conventional weapons.

Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said this was the first use of the experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile “based on” Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh missile model, though Singh declined to identify the specific type of missile or its capabilities.

Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), says it’s likely the first time a MIRV has been used in combat.

The use of this type of missile armed with conventional warheads is an escalation of Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling, Karako said, which includes the recent update of its nuclear doctrine.

“This is a big rocket with payload capability – presumably MIRVs – and has the baggage associated with it of nuclear delivery vehicles,” he said.

Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said the launch was significant. “To my knowledge, yes, it’s the first time MIRV has been used in combat,” Kristensen said.

The United Nations Secretary General’s spokesperson warned on Thursday that Russia’s use of a new, medium-range ballistic missile is “yet another concerning and worrying development.”

“All of this [is] going in the wrong direction. What we want to see is for all parties to take urgent steps to de-escalate the situation,” Stephane Dujarric said in a regular briefing on Thursday, adding that “what we want to see is an end to this conflict in line with General Assembly resolutions, international law, and territorial integrity.”

Why is this significant?

Putin’s announcement comes during a tense week in the conflict, which is now more than 1,000 days old.

This week, both US and British/French-made missiles have been fired into Russia by Ukraine, after US President Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission to use longer-range American missiles across the border.

On Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry and two US officials said Ukraine had fired the US-made ATACMS into Russia for the first time.

Russia’s Defense Ministry also said its air defenses shot down two British/French-made Storm Shadow missiles, acknowledging Ukraine’s use of the longer-range weapons.

In turn, Putin updated Russia’s nuclear doctrine, with the Kremlin saying the revised military doctrine would in theory lower the bar for first use of nuclear weapons.

How does Ukraine defend itself?

Ukraine uses a Patriot missile defense system supplied by the US and Germany to intercept incoming ballistic missile warheads, according to the Missile Threat Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Patriot system is designed to engage incoming warheads, either with an exploding warhead of its own, or with kinetic interceptors – so-called “hit-to-kill” technology, which destroys the incoming warhead by striking it directly.

Patriot interceptors have a vertical range of about 20 kilometers (12 miles) and defend an area of about 15 to 20 kilometers around the battery, according to the Congressional Research Service.

But Ukraine has only a limited number of Patriots and batteries. Some cities, like the capital Kyiv, enjoy greater protection than others.

Why was Dnipro targeted?

The Dnipropetrovsk region has been a frequent target of Russian bombardment in recent months.

It borders the partially occupied Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions and has become a hub for people who have fled areas that are now under Russian control.

The region is now home to more than 400,000 internally displaced people. Dnipro, the fourth-largest city in Ukraine, is an important center of life in the eastern part of the country.

It is relatively close to the front lines, yet still fairly well protected by air defenses. That, plus its transportation infrastructure links to the rest of the country, makes the city a key hub in Ukraine’s war effort.

How much damage did the attack cause?

The head of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk military administration said Russia was “massively attacking” the region on Thursday morning.

Three people were injured after houses were damaged, and a rehabilitation center for people with disabilities was also impacted in the attack, Serhiy Lysak said on Telegram.

There were two fires in Dnipro and “damage to an industrial enterprise,” he added.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

Gunmen opened fire on vehicles carrying Shiite Muslims in Pakistan’s restive northwest on Thursday, killing at least 42 people, including six women, and wounding 20 others in one of the region’s deadliest such attacks in recent years, police said.

The attack happened in Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where sectarian clashes between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites have killed dozens of people in recent months.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attack. It came a week after authorities reopened a key highway in the region that had been closed for weeks following deadly clashes.

Local police official Azmat Ali said several vehicles were traveling in a convoy from the city of Parachinar to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, when gunmen opened fire. He said at least 10 passengers were in critical condition at a hospital.

Aftab Alam, a provincial minister, said 42 people were killed in the attack, and that officers were investigating to determine who was behind it.

Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi called the shootings a “terrorist attack.” Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack, and Sharif said those behind the killing of innocent civilians will not go unpunished.

Kurram resident Mir Hussain, 35, said he saw four gunmen emerge from a vehicle and open fire on buses and cars.

“I think other people were also firing at the convoy of vehicles from nearby open farm field,” he said. “The firing continued for about 40 minutes.” He said he hid until the attackers fled.

“I heard cries of women, and people were shouting for the help,” he said.

Ibne Ali Bangash, a relative of one of the victims, described the convoy attack as the saddest day in Kurram’s history.

“More than 40 people from our community have been martyred,” he said. “It’s a shameful matter for the government.”

Baqir Haideri, a local Shiite leader, denounced the assault and said the death toll was likely to rise. He accused local authorities of not providing adequate security for the convoy of more than 100 vehicles despite fears of possible attacks by militants who had recently threatened to target Shiites in Kurram.

Shop owners in Parachinar announced a strike on Friday to protest the attack.

Shiite Muslims make up about 15% of the 240 million population of Sunni-majority Pakistan, which has a history of sectarian animosity between the communities.

Although the two groups generally live together peacefully, tensions have existed for decades in some areas, especially in parts of Kurram, where Shiites are the majority.

Dozens of people from both sides have been killed since July when a land dispute erupted in Kurram that later turned into general sectarian violence.

Pakistan is tackling violence in the northwest and southwest, where militants and separatists often target police, troops and civilians. Violence in the northwest has been blamed on the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group that is separate from Afghanistan’s Taliban but linked to them. Violence in southwestern Balochistan province has been blamed on members of the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army.

Russia’s use of a nuclear-capable ballistic missile on Thursday is the latest escalation in the Ukraine war.

It also marks a decisive, and potentially dangerous moment in Moscow’s conflict with the West.

The use of what Vladimir Putin said was a ballistic missile with multiple warheads in offensive combat is a clear departure from decades of the Cold War doctrine of deterrence.

Ballistic missiles with multiple warheads, known as “multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles,” or MIRVs, have never been used to strike an enemy, experts say.

“To my knowledge, yes, it’s the first time MIRV has been used in combat,” Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said.

Ballistic missiles have been the underpinning of deterrence, offering what is known as “mutual assured destruction,” or MAD, in the nuclear age.

The thinking is, if even a few missiles survive a nuclear first strike, there will be enough firepower left in the opponent’s arsenal to wipe out several major cities of the aggressor, therefore ensuring neither side is unable to escape the consequences of nuclear actions.

In that vein, ballistic missiles were designed to stand sentinel over a future where nuclear arms would never again be fired in anger.

But analysts, including Kristensen, argue that MIRVed missiles may invite, rather than deter, a first strike.

The highly destructive capacity of MIRVs means that they are both potential first-strike weapons and first-strike targets, Kristensen and colleague Matt Korda at the Federation of American Scientists wrote in a study published in March.

That’s because, it’s easier to destroy multiple warheads before they are launched, than try to shoot them down as they are dropping at hypersonic speed on their targets.

And according to a recent posting from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US-based nonprofit science advocacy organization, this creates a “use them or lose them” type scenario — an incentive to strike first in a time of crisis. “Otherwise, a first strike attack that destroyed a country’s MIRVed missiles would disproportionately damage that country’s ability to retaliate,” said the posting.

Videos of Thursday’s Russian strike showed the multiple warheads falling at different angles on the target, and each warhead would need to be defeated with an anti-missile rocket, a daunting prospect even for the best air defense systems.

And while the warheads dropped on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday were not nuclear, their use in conventional combat operations is certain to raise new uncertainty in a world already on edge.

Importantly, Russia alerted the United States to the use of the missile fired Thursday beforehand. But even with that advanced warning, any further launches by Putin’s regime will now inevitably ratchet up fears across Europe, with many asking the question: Has deterrence just died?

The world MIRVs

It is not only Russia and the United States that have MIRV technology. China has it on its intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation, and the United Kingdom and France, along with Russia and the US, have long had MIRV technology on their submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

And there are new players in the MIRV game, too. Pakistan reportedly tested a missile with multiple warheads in 2017, and earlier this year India said it had successfully tested a MIRVed ICBM.

Analysts worry about land-based MIRVs more than those on subs. That’s because subs are stealthy and hard to detect. Land-based missiles, especially those in stationary silos, are more easily found and therefore are more tempting targets.

In their March report, Kristensen and Korda wrote about the perils of the expanding MIRV club, calling it “a sign of a larger worrisome trend in worldwide nuclear arsenals” and an “emerging nuclear arms race.”

India proclaimed MIRV success during a test the same month was just one warning sign, they wrote.

“It follows China’s deployment of MIRVs on some of its DF-5 ICBMs, Pakistan’s apparent pursuit of MIRVs for its Ababeel medium-range missile, North Korea may also be pursuing MIRV technology, and the United Kingdom has decided to increase its nuclear stockpile to enable it to deploy more warheads on its submarine-launched missiles,” Kristensen and Korda wrote.

They argue that more MIRV warheads in a range of county’s arsenals “would dramatically reduce crisis stability by incentivizing leaders to launch their nuclear weapons quickly in a crisis.”

“A world in which nearly all nuclear-armed countries deploy significant MIRV capability looks far more dangerous than our current geostrategic environment,” they said.

Iran announced Friday it was activating new advanced centrifuges – which enrich uranium for the country’s nuclear program – after the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog criticized the country for not cooperating with the agency.

Iran will activate “a noticeable number of new and advanced centrifuges of different types,” state news agency IRNA reported, citing a joint statement from Iran’s foreign ministry and its Atomic Energy Organization.

“The steps are being taken to protect the country’s interests and further develop the peaceful nuclear energy,” in line with national needs and within Iran’s rights, the statement said according to IRNA.

Injecting gas into centrifuges is part of the process to enrich uranium, which could ultimately be used to develop a nuclear weapon, though Iran has repeatedly denied it has any ambitions of building a bomb.

The move was in response to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose board passed a resolution Thursday ordering Iran to urgently improve its cooperation with the agency, according to Reuters. The IAEA and Iran have long tussled over various issues, including traces of uranium found at locations that have not been declared nuclear sites.

On Thursday, the IAEA board also asked the agency to compile an assessment of whether Iran had possible undeclared nuclear material, and of its cooperation with the organization.

Iran decried the resolution, claiming in the joint statement that it was politically motivated, IRNA reported. The statement added that Iran would continue its technical and safeguards cooperation with the IAEA as previously agreed.

In a statement Thursday, Iran’s foreign ministry claimed the resolution was made “under pressure and insistence from three European countries and the US,” and warned it could trigger “an appropriate response from Iran.”

Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. But IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi has previously warned that Tehran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to do so.

He has acknowledged the UN agency cannot guarantee that none of Iran’s centrifuges may have been peeled away for clandestine enrichment.

Israel Defense Minister Gideon Sa’ar also praised the IAEA’s resolution, writing on X that “Iran’s nuclear race must be stopped.” The resolution “is a significant part of the diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” Sa’ar wrote.

Under the terms of the nuclear deal struck in 2015, Iran was limited to operating around 5,000 older-model centrifuges, and the nation was allowed to use advance centrifuges for research purposes only.

But Tehran gradually scaled back its commitments to the nuclear deal after then-President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact in 2018 and reimposed economic sanctions on Iran, which crippled its economy. By 2019, Iran was launching new centrifuges in a major break from the deal.

Earlier this year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran’s breakout time – the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon – “is now probably one or two weeks,” the shortest breakout time that US officials have ever referenced.