NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks Tuesday after Russia attacked the city of Dnipro with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war.
NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks Tuesday after Russia attacked a central city with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war.
The conflict is „entering a decisive phase“, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday, and „taking on very dramatic dimensions.“
Ukraine’s parliament canceled a session as security was tightened following Thursday’s Russian strike on a military facility in the city of Dnipro.
In a stark warning to the West, President Vladimir Putin said in a nationally televised speech that the attack with the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was in retaliation for Kyiv’s use of U.S. and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.
Putin said Western air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile.
Ukrainian military officials said the missile that hit Dnipro had reached a speed of Mach 11 and carried six nonnuclear warheads each releasing six submunitions.
Speaking Friday to military and weapons industries officials, Putin said Russia is launching production of the Oreshnik.
„No one in the world has such weapons“, he said with a thin smile. „Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development.“
But he added, „we have this system now. And this is important.“
Testing the missile will continue, „including in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia“, Putin said, noting there is „a stockpile of such systems ready for use.“
Putin said that while it isn’t an intercontinental missile, it’s so powerful that the use of several of them fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with strategicweapons.
Gen. Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with nuclear or conventional warheads, echoing Putin’s claim that even with conventional warheads, „the massive use of the weapon would be comparable in effect to the use of nuclear weapons.
