Nato and Ukraine to hold emergency talks over Russia’s new hypersonic missile

The Telegraph: Nato and Kyiv will hold emergency talks on Tuesday over Russia’s use of an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile.

The Kremlin fired the new intermediate-range ballistic missile at a central Ukrainian city on Thursday in response to Kyiv’s use of American and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russia.

In a televised address, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said that US air defence systems would be powerless to stop the new missile, which he said flies at ten times the speed of sound and which he called the Oreshnik, meaning hazelnut.

He also said it could be used to attack any Ukrainian ally whose missiles are used to attack Russia.

“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,” Putin said.

Officials from Nato and Ukraine are now set to meet on Tuesday, while Mark Rutte, the Nato chief, also held talks with Donald Trump, the US president-elect, in Florida on the “global security issues facing the alliance”.

Ukrainian military officials said the missile that hit Dnipro had reached a speed of Mach 11 and carried six non-nuclear warheads each releasing six submunitions.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said the use of the missile was an “obvious and serious escalation in the scale and brutality of this war, a cynical violation of the UN Charter”.

Gen Sergei Karakayev, the head of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with nuclear or conventional warheads.

Rescue workers put out a fire at a house hit by a Russian strike on Dnipro - Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP

“No one in the world has such weapons,” Putin said, adding that testing of the missile would continue, “including in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia.”

Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister widely considered as having the warmest relations with the Kremlin in the European Union, cautioned against underestimating Russia’s responses. “It’s not a trick… there will be consequences,” he said.

Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, said the conflict was “entering a decisive phase” and “taking on very dramatic dimensions”, while the country’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski described the attack as “an act of desperation”.

Jan Lipavský, the Czech foreign minister, called the strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe”.