What’s Behind Ukraine and Russia’s Missile Brinkmanship?

The low-lying clouds over the city lit up for a split second, video footage showed, then streaks of dozens of glowing warheads plummeted out of the sky.

Booms unlike anything the war-weary residents had heard before thundered through the streets of Dnipro, a central Ukrainian city with a population of about one million.

The main contours of the attack on Thursday morning soon came to light: President Vladimir V. Putin said Russia had test fired an intermediate-range missile from its arsenal designed to deliver nuclear weapons, though without the nuclear warheads aboard.

The Russian strike caused little damage, but it capped a dizzying week of tit-for-tat moves in the war in Ukraine, shifting focus from the ground assaults on the battlefield to a Cold War-style missile brinkmanship. In the previous two days, Ukraine had fired longer-range missiles provided by the U.S. and Britain at military targets inside Russia. Mr. Putin made clear that the Russian missile test was a response to those strikes — a warning to the West to reconsider military aid for Kyiv.

The long-range missile duels have been waged jointly with the fighting on the frontline, but are having little discernible influence on the ground, suggesting that they serve a political purpose rather than a military one.

Ukraine is hoping for military gains that will provide leverage in any cease-fire negotiations. Moscow is elevating threats of nuclear war before President-elect Donald J. Trump is inaugurated in January. Mr. Trump has expressed skepticism about continuing American military support for Ukraine and said he intends to broker a peace agreement in the war.