NATO, Ukraine set emergency talks after Russian hypersonic missile attack

Russian President Vladimir Putin sits at a table, holding papers.

By Illia Novikov and Volodymyr Yurchuk

Nov. 22, 2024 Updated 2:04 PM PT

KYIV, Ukraine — 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 after Thursday’s Russian strike on a military facility near the city of Dnipro.

In a stark warning to the West, President Vladimir Putin said in a nationally televised speech to his nation that the attack with the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was 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 — 11 times the speed of sound — 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.”

Testing the missile will continue, “including in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia,” Putin said, noting that there is ”a stockpile of such systems ready for use.”

Putin said the missile is so powerful that the use of several of them fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with strategic — or nuclear — weapons.

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.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov kept up the bellicose tone Friday, blaming “the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries” in supplying weapons to Ukraine to strike Russia.

“The Russian side has clearly demonstrated its capabilities, and the contours of further retaliatory actions in the event that our concerns were not taken into account have also been quite clearly outlined,” he said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, widely seen as having the warmest relations with the Kremlin among European Union and NATO nations, echoed Moscow’s talking points, suggesting the use of U.S.-supplied weapons in Ukraine probably requires direct American involvement.

“These are rockets that are fired and then guided to a target via an electronic system, which requires the world’s most advanced technology and satellite communications capability,” Orban said on state radio. “There is a strong assumption … that these missiles cannot be guided without the assistance of American personnel.”

Orban cautioned against underestimating Russia’s responses, emphasizing that the country’s recent modifications to its nuclear deployment doctrine should not be dismissed as a “bluff.” “It’s not a trick. … There will be consequences,” he said.

Separately in Kyiv, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky called Thursday’s missile strike by Moscow an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe.”

At a news conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Lipavsky expressed his full support for delivering the necessary additional air defense systems to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks.”

He underlined that the Czech Republic will impose no limits on the use of its weapons and equipment given to Ukraine.

Three lawmakers from Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, confirmed that Friday’s session was called off because of the threat of Russian missiles targeting government buildings in central Kyiv.

In addition, there also was a recommendation to limit the work of all commercial offices and nongovernmental organizations in that area, “and local residents were warned of the increased threat,” said lawmaker Mykyta Poturaiev, who added that this is not the first time such a threat has been received.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office continued to work in compliance with standard security measures, a spokesperson said.

Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence said the Oreshnik missile was fired from Russia’s Astrakhan region and flew 15 minutes before striking Dnipro. The Pentagon confirmed that Russia’s missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate-range missile based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile.

Thursday’s attack struck the Pivdenmash plant that built ICBMs when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The military facility is about four miles southwest of the center of Dnipro, a city of about 1 million that is Ukraine’s fourth-largest and a key hub for military supplies and humanitarian aid. It is also home to one of the country’s largest hospitals for treating wounded soldiers from the front before their transfer to Kyiv or abroad.

The stricken area was cordoned off and out of public view. No fatalities were reported from the attack.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia struck a residential district of Sumy overnight with Iranian-designed Shahed drones, killing two people and injuring 13, the regional administration said.

Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne said the drones were stuffed with shrapnel elements, quoting Sumy regional head Volodymyr Artiukh as saying: “These weapons are used to destroy people, not to destroy objects.”

Novikov and Yurchuk write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Lorne Cook in Brussels; Samya Kullab in Kyiv; Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia; and Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, contributed to this report.

NATO and Ukraine to hold emergency talks after Russia’s attack with new hypersonic missile

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