Nato and Ukraine will hold talks next week in Brussels over Russia’s firing of an experimental hypersonic intermediate-range missile, diplomats said on Friday.
The meeting on Tuesday of the Nato-Ukraine council will happen on ambassadorial level. It was called by Kyiv after the strike on the city of Dnipro on Thursday, officials told Agence France-Presse.
Russian president Vladimir Putin said Russia had struck Ukraine with a new hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile in response to Kyiv’s use of US and UK missiles against Russia. Mr Putin claimed it travelled at 10 times the speed of sound and so could not be intercepted. Russian sources said the range was 5,000km (3,100 miles).
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) at Dnipro, though the US said that was incorrect. ICBMs are defined as having a range greater than 5,500km. The Pentagon said the missile that Russia fired was based on the RS-26 Rubezh ICBM.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the use of the experimental ballistic missile by Russia amounted to “a clear and severe escalation” in the war and called for strong worldwide condemnation, as Nato accused Mr Putin of seeking to “terrorise” civilians and intimidate Ukraine’s allies.
Nato spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah said: Deploying this capability will neither change the course of the conflict nor deter Nato allies from supporting Ukraine.”
In a statement after Mr Putin’s address about Thursday’s strike on a military site in the city of Dnipro, Mr Zelenskiy said the attack was “yet more proof that Russia has no interest in peace”, adding that “pressure is needed. Russia must be forced into real peace, which can only be achieved through strength”.
The Russian president threatened further attacks, saying Moscow “had the right” to strike western countries that provided Kyiv with weapons used against Russian targets. “A regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character,” Mr Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8pm in Moscow.
China on Friday reiterated calls for “restraint” by all parties in the Ukraine war after the missile attack. “All parties should remain calm and exercise restraint, work to de-escalate the situation through dialogue and consultation, and create conditions for an early ceasefire,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said.
Russia’s use of the experimental hypersonic missile to hit Ukraine was a “terrible escalation” in the war, German chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday.
Elsewhere, Russian defence minister Andrei Belousov said in a video released on Friday that Russian forces in Ukraine had accelerated their advance.
A Russian drone attack on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed two people and injured 12 on Friday morning, regional authorities said, according to Reuters. Twelve apartment buildings, five private residences, a store and three cars were damaged after three drones attacked the city at about 5am local time, police said.
Russia has pummelled the region and its critical infrastructure in deadly attacks over the past weeks. – Guardian