President Putin has warned he could hit back against countries supplying weapons being used against targets in Russia.

He appeared to be referring to the US and UK, who this week gave Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles over the border.

The Russian president said his military would “respond resolutely in a mirror way” to an “escalation of aggressive actions”.

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“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities of the countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities,” Mr Putin said in a TV address.

British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles were fired into Russia for the first time this week, just days after President Biden authorised the same policy shift.

President Putin responded on Thursday by saying his military had tested a new intermediate-range missile in a strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

The Russian leader called it the Oreshnik, Russian for hazelnut tree, and said air defences wouldn’t be able to destroy it as it travels 10 times the speed of sound.

Ukraine said earlier that a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) might have been used on Dnipro, but the Pentagon said it believed it was an experimental medium-range weapon.

It said Russia had given notice of the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said on Thursday night the use of a new missile was a “clear and severe escalation”, the second this year after North Korean troops were sent to bolster Russian forces.

Mr Zelenskyy urged a stronger response from allies and said on X that the Russian leader was “spitting in the face of those in the world who genuinely want peace to be restored”.

According to public broadcaster Suspilne, a Ukrainian parliamentary sitting scheduled for Friday has been postponed over security concerns, with no more planned until December.

Military experts say modern ICBMs and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) are extremely difficult to intercept.

Meanwhile, Russia’s ambassador told Sky News that Britain’s missile decision had significantly changed its participation in the conflict.

Andrei Kelin said: “Absolutely, Britain and the UK is now directly involved in this war, because this firing cannot happen without NATO staff, British staff as well.”

He called it a “deliberate cheating of us” and said he had received multiple assurances the Storm Shadows would only be used inside Ukrainian territory.

However, Russia has long used Iranian-made drones to attack Ukrainian cities.

The ambassador said the US and UK move “seriously escalates the situation” and the West should carefully consider Russia’s new rules for using nuclear weapons – as underestimating the risk of escalation is “dangerous”.

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President Putin again raised the spectre of nuclear weapons this week – something he has done multiple times in recent years – when he approved changes that lower the threshold for such a strike.

Many have dismissed the move as empty sabre rattling, but Russia’s ambassador told Sky News he hoped the change “would be carefully considered by Western experts”.

Russia’s defence ministry also claimed on Thursday to have shot down two British-made Storm Shadow missiles, six HIMARS rockets, and 67 drones.

Experts believe the use of Western missiles inside Russia is unlikely to change the course of the war but could put Russian forces in a more vulnerable position and complicate logistics.

A tall man emerged from an array of gym equipment, walking towards me, slightly swaying as his prosthetic leg flexed and stepped in time with his natural one.

His right arm was missing, and his left was a smooth black prosthesis arm with his hands and fingers clenched in a fist.

He was introduced to me as Anton. I wasn’t sure how to greet him other than to say hello.

He saw my hesitation, and smiling he raised his left arm to shake my hand, his fingers opening and closing around my hand as we observed a customary gesture of greeting – a handshake.

His handshake was gentle and completely natural. I was simply amazed. I’ve never seen or experienced anything like it.

“Wow, it works,” I said.

“Yes, it does,” he replied with a smirk, and then carried on walking down the corridor.

This was to be a day of incredible experiences.

We are in the Tytanova Rehabilitation Centre in Kyiv. Much of it is a large gymnasium kitted out with state-of-the-art equipment designed for amputees to keep fit and rehabilitate.

The amputees are all soldiers injured in the war with Russia. These men may never fight again, but they’re in a renewed battle to rebuild their lives, and here they’re being helped with extraordinary technology.

It’s called osseointegration – a titanium implant that is connected to the bone of the patient and the prosthetic arm or leg clicks on to that.

But this is the remarkable bit. The nervous system in their limb is gone so they learn to send messages to their muscles and their new arm or leg comes alive, following instructions from their brain.

The technology was first used in Ukraine a year ago and can be used on all limbs.

We meet Oleksandr Solomiany, 48, who lost his right arm last December in the battle of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Before the war, he was a tech entrepreneur specialising in the environment.

Oleksandr is still learning how to use his new arm. He walked us through a parking lot and into another building for another training session.

This isn’t a physical training session though, it’s a mental one. He will be practising how to teach his brain to command his muscles to move his bionic arm.

It’s his third session and he says it will take at least two or three more months before he gains the skills to fully operate it.

Oleksandr sits down and takes off his t-shirt, he then removes his bionic arm so that sensory wires can be attached to his amputated arm and to the chest and back muscles surrounding it.

The training session today will be with a bionic prosthetic arm that is not physically attached to him, only wired into him.

“What are you trying to do?” I ask him while he looks at a screen, concentrating hard.

“I imagine that I close my arm and rotate,” he tells me while moving the prosthetic using his brain and chest muscles.

Oleksandr’s trainer Yaroslav Patsukevych is a biomedical engineer who volunteers here.

He explains to me: “You can fool the system to overwrite the muscles that you usually use with your hands, for example, to teach the chest muscles to do the same thing.

“When the patient contracts his muscle, this prosthesis calibrates with his brain and recreates this command with the prosthesis.”

I asked Yaroslav where this prosthesis comes from. He told me the hand is made in Britain, the arm is made in America, and the technology is Swedish.

And the man – I think to myself – is Ukrainian.

For Oleksandr, even though this is mental training it is physically draining. I ask him if it’s a big experience for him, realising that he can actually have an arm that works.

“It’s the first stage of [a] long, long way in my life. It’s only my first prosthesis and technologies never stop. I will expect another technology, like chip in the brain, or something else,” he replies.

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Oleksandr leads a very active life and has no regrets about his battle injury – the focus is now on the future.

“This arm helps me with my routine, with my everyday tasks. I feel better with this arm, like normal people, like a normal man.”

The osseointegration surgery costs £20,000 for each lost limb, while a prosthetic arm or leg costs £80,000.

The founder of Tytanova Rehab, Viacheslav Zaporozhets, is a millionaire businessman who wanted to help with the war effort. He fundraises money to help more and more men, and he says the beneficial effects on the amputees are immediate.

“I’ll tell you this, we’re bringing them back to life, even in a psychological sense,” Viacheslav Zaporozhets says.

“I always say, you’re not broken. We’ll teach you how to drive, even how to swim.

“From day one, we demonstrate this. When a new patient arrives, a veteran greets them and shows them what they’ve learned to do.”

He and his organisation don’t just rehabilitate the injured, they also evacuate them from the frontlines.

With their 22 ambulances, they’ve saved the lives of over 30,000 men since the start of the war, bringing them to safety.

The figure is, frankly, mind-blowing.

This war has claimed the lives of huge numbers of fighting men, but the figure itself is not published.

But we do know that the number of living casualties will be much, much higher, and these “bionic men” are just a fraction of them.

At least eight convictions predating the Horizon Post Office scandal are being looked at by the body investigating potential miscarriages of justice, Sky News has learned.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has confirmed it is examining multiple cases of former sub-postmasters affected by Capture software.

The computer accounting system was used in the early 1990s, prior to Horizon being introduced to Post Office branches from 1999 onwards.

Horizon was at the centre of the Post Office scandal and saw hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of stealing from their branches.

The Kroll report, commissioned by the government earlier this year, found that Capture had bugs and glitches and there was a reasonable likelihood it had caused cash shortfalls too.

Lord Beamish, the former Labour MP Kevan Jones, has been supporting victims and is calling for the government to extend current legislation to automatically quash convictions.

The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act was passed in May but does not include Capture victims.

Lord Beamish told Sky News he has raised the issue with the Justice Secretary and called for a House of Lords debate.

“The government are going to have to take this seriously,” he said. “We can’t have a situation where we have a two-tier system where people get exonerated from Horizon and the Capture cases are either forgotten or have to go through a very lengthy legal process to get their names cleared.”

He added he had “little faith” in the CCRC’s “ability to deal with cases”, after multiple Horizon cases were referred to the body years ago.

“The problem with these cases is the lack of evidence… that has been destroyed or lost so actually proving some of these cases through that process will be very difficult.

“Therefore I think a blanket exoneration like we had with Horizon I think has got to be discussed and considered for these cases.”

The CCRC told Sky News it has five cases under review “in which the Capture IT system could be a factor”.

It also said it is “seeking further information” on eight cases referenced in the Kroll report.

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The CCRC added that the time taken for a case review to be completed was dependent on the “complexity” of each case “and how readily available information about it is”. In a statement, it admitted: “The availability of information can be a particular hurdle in older cases.”

Chris Roberts’ mother, Liz Roberts, was convicted in 1999 of stealing £46,000 from the Post Office and spent 13 months behind bars.

Liz, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, passed away earlier this year.

Chris said she was jailed four days before he turned 17, and he used to have “nightmares” that she was “going to die in there”.

“There was no evidence of any financial gain because they went through everything. And obviously the money wasn’t in our accounts because it didn’t exist,” he added.

Despite being offered “three deals” by the Post Office to plead guilty, Liz refused and was sent to prison.

Chris believes that the 2019 High Court win by Horizon victims was a missed opportunity for the Post Office to look back at Capture cases.

“It would have been worth something then because my mum would have died knowing that everybody else knew she was innocent,” he said.

“My dad would have died knowing that the love of his life wasn’t vilified as a criminal.”

Chris wants his mother exonerated and “those actively responsible” to “stand up in court… and justify themselves”.

A Department for Business and Trade spokesperson said: “We were horrified to learn about the issues with the Capture system and are working closely across government to thoroughly examine Kroll’s independent report and consider what action should be taken.

“We continue to listen to postmasters and others who have been sharing their views on the report’s findings since its publication last month.”