Russia-Ukraine war live: Kremlin says hypersonic missile strike on Ukraine was warning to the west

The Kremlin said on Friday that a strike on Ukraine using a newly developed hypersonic ballistic missile was designed to warn the west that Moscow will respond to moves by the US and the UK to let Kyiv strike Russia with their missiles.

According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, was speaking a day after Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Moscow had fired the new missile – the Oreshnik or ‘hazel tree’- at a Ukrainian military facility.

Peskov said Russia had not been obliged to warn the US about the strike, but had informed the US 30 minutes before the launch anyway. Putin remained open to dialogue, Peskov said.

Ukraine’s parliament has cancelled Friday’s session, lawmakers said, citing the risk of a Russian missile attack on the district of Kyiv where government buildings are located.

“The hour of questions to the government has been cancelled,” Yevgenia Kravchuk, an MP from the ruling party told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Kravchuk said:

There are signals of an increased risk of attacks on the government district in the coming days.”

Andrew Roth

Like Chekhov’s gun coming off the wall in Act V, it was probably only a matter of time before Vladimir Putin launched an experimental, nuclear-capable ballistic missile into Ukraine. It is hardly a coincidence that his decision comes as the war approaches a likely endgame, with both sides jockeying for position ahead of negotiations in the shadow of Donald Trump.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia quite knows what Trump will do when he takes office in January. But the escalations taking place now will set a new status quo for the day he becomes president, at which point Trump’s options range from hard-nosed horse-trading to simply throwing Ukraine under the bus.

Ukrainian officials said this week that they simply do not know what the president-elect has planned for them. And with little idea of Trump’s intentions, they are focused on optimizing their battlefield position, seeking to hold a beachhead in Russia’s Kursk region and shore up the frontlines elsewhere across the battlefield to be in as strong a position as possible before the new US administration.

US officials, similarly unsure of what their new president will do, are keen to make Ukraine as self-sufficient as possible and to prepare their European partners to increase support to Ukraine after Biden’s departure. One way some of his administration officials have described the goal is to avoid handing Trump another Afghanistan, where the country’s military collapses as soon as US ceases to provide support. Most are pessimistic that Ukraine can continue the fight indefinitely, however.

In the final months of his term, Joe Biden offered Ukraine one thing it has been clamoring for: the right to use Atacms long-range missiles against targets inside Russia. He has also given Ukraine authorisation to use landmines and the right to send US military contractors in to fix the hardware Ukraine needs to stay in the fight.

Russia’s use of an experimental hypersonic missile to hit Ukraine was a “terrible escalation” in the war, German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said on Friday.

The deployment of the new weapon showed “how dangerous this war is”, Scholz said in a speech, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). He added:

That (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has now also used a medium-range missile to strike Ukrainian territory is a terrible escalation.”

A Russian drone attack on the north-eastern 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 (3am GMT), the national police said.

Volodymyr Artiukh, Sumy regional governor, said Russian forces had equipped drones with shrapnel for the attack on a densely populated area of the city, reports Reuters.

“This weapon is used … exclusively (to kill) people,” Artiukh said, pointing to scars on a damaged building. “Not for a facility, but in order to destroy more people.”

The video posted by Sumy regional military administration after the attack showed damaged cars and buildings with blown-out windows, according to Reuters.

Russia has pummelled the region and its critical infrastructure in deadly attacks over the past weeks. An overnight drone attack on Tuesday on the small town of Hlukhiv in the region killed 12 people, including a child.

On Sunday evening, a missile attack on Sumy killed 11 and injured 89 more people, in addition to leaving the region’s administrative centre without power.

China on Friday reiterated calls for “calm” and “restraint” by all parties in the Ukraine war after Russia confirmed it fired an experimental hypersonic ballistic missile, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“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,” foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, told a regular briefing.

Ukraine called Russia’s strike a major ramping up of the “scale and brutality” of the war by a “crazy neighbour”, while Kyiv’s main backer, the US, said that Moscow was to blame for escalating the conflict “at every turn”.

After the launch, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that the conflict in Ukraine had characteristics of a “global” war and did not rule out strikes on western countries.

In response, Beijing on Friday issued a call for calm. “China’s position on the Ukraine issue has been consistent and clear, advocating for resolving the crisis through political means and avoiding an escalation of the situation,” Lin said, according to AFP.

China presents itself as a neutral party in the Ukraine war and says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the US and other western nations. But it remains a close political and economic ally of Russia and Nato members have called Beijing a “decisive enabler” of the war, which it has never condemned.

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, officials told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

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.

Reuters has this explainer on what the Oreshnik (hazel) is:

Putin said Oreshnik was a hypersonic ballistic missile. He said it travelled at 10 times the speed of sound and so could not be intercepted. Russian sources said the range was 5,000 km (3,100 miles).

It appears to have multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles: separate warheads able to hit different targets.

Anatoly Matviychuk, a Russian military expert, said it could carry six to eight conventional or nuclear warheads, and was probably already in service, according to Yuri Podolyaka, a prominent Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger.

The Pentagon said the missile that Russia fired was based on the RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It said the US had been notified of the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia had fired an ICBM at Dnipro, though the US said that was incorrect. ICBMs are defined as having a range greater than 5,500 km (3,400 miles).
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a Russian attack with a new type of ballistic missile was a “clear and severe escalation” and called for worldwide condemnation.

Russian ballistic missile attack a ‘severe escalation’, says Zelenskyy

Pjotr Sauer

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the use of an experimental ballistic missile by Russia amounted to “a clear and severe escalation” in the war and called for strong worldwide condemnation, as Nato accused Vladimir 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 Vladimir Putin’s address about Thursday’s strike on a military site in the city of Dnipro, Zelenskyy 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,” Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8pm in Moscow.

Ukraine’s parliament reportedly postponed a Friday sitting because of “potential security issues” after the attack, public broadcaster Suspilne said, quoting sources. It reported that legislators were told to keep their families out of Kyiv’s government district and quoted parliamentarians as saying that, for the moment, the next sitting was not scheduled until December.

The new ballistic missile was called Oreshnik (the hazel), Putin said, and its deployment “was a response to US plans to produce and deploy intermediate and short-range missiles”. He said Russia would “respond decisively and symmetrically” in the event of an escalation.

Russia fired an “experimental” ballistic missile at the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday in what the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, called “a clear and severe escalation” of the 33-month-old war.

Vladimir Putin said the strike was “a response to US plans to produce and deploy intermediate and short-range missiles”. The Russian president also threatened further attacks, saying Moscow “had the right” to strike western countries that provided Kyiv with weapons used against Russian targets.

A Nato spokesperson said Russia was seeking to “terrorise” civilians and intimidate Ukraine’s allies. “Deploying this capability will neither change the course of the conflict nor deter Nato allies from supporting Ukraine,” Farah Dakhlallah said.

The attack came after the US and the UK lifted a ban on Kyiv striking Russian territory with advanced western weapons. Russia notified Washington shortly before Thursday’s strike, a US official said.

Putin said in a televised address to the nation that Moscow hit a Ukrainian military facility with a new medium-range ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik” (the hazel). And the Russian leader hinted the missile was capable of unleashing a nuclear payload and said Russia would “respond decisively and symmetrically” in the event of an escalation.

In other developments:

• The new ballistic missile was part of a wider salvo of nine missiles fired from the Astrakhan region of Russia in the early hours of Thursday. Six of the missiles were intercepted by Ukraine’s air force but the new ballistic missile was not stopped. The missile was said to have hit “without consequences”, Ukraine’s air force said, though it added that complete information about victims had yet to be received.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for strong worldwide condemnation on the strike, describing it as a major step-up in the “scale and brutality” of the war. The Ukrainian president said the attack was “yet more proof that Russia has no interest in peace”, adding that a “response is needed. Pressure is needed. Russia must be forced into real peace, which can only be achieved through strength”.

• US and UK sources indicated they believed the missile was an experimental, nuclear-capable, intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), which has a theoretical range of below 3,420 miles (5,500km). That is enough to reach Europe from where it was fired in south-western Russia, but not the US.

• UN secretary general António Guterres’s spokesperson said Russia’s use of the new ballistic missile was “yet another concerning and worrying development. “All of this [is] going in the wrong direction,” Stéphane Dujarric said as he called on all parties to de-escalate the conflict and “to protect civilians, not hit civilian targets or critical civilian infrastructure”.

• Russian strikes killed at least two people in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, the acting mayor said on Friday. “Several massive explosions occurred in Sumy,” Artem Kobzar said on Telegram. He said air defences were still working as of just before 6am local time and warned residents to stay away from windows. The Sumy regional military administration said a residential neighbourhood had been struck by a Russian drone, adding that rescue operations were under way. It confirmed the two deaths and said 12 people had been injured.

• Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its forces had captured the eastern Ukrainian village of Dalne in the Donetsk region, a focal point of their advance. Ukraine’s general staff made no acknowledgment of Dalne being in Russian hands. The Ukrainian military’s late report mentioned the village as one of seven in an area where Russian forces had tried to pierce Ukrainian defences 26 times over the previous 24 hours. It said 10 of 16 armed clashes in the area continued.

• Ukraine’s parliament postponed a sitting due to have taken place on Friday out of security concerns, public broadcaster Suspilne reported, quoting sources. It said the order told members to keep their families out of Kyiv’s government district and quoted parliamentarians as saying that, for the moment, the next sitting was not scheduled until December.