NATO and Ukraine will meet in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss Russia’s hypersonic ballistic missile strike on Ukraine, diplomatic sources reported on Friday.
The meeting, requested by Kyiv, will take place at the ambassadorial level, the same sources specified.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Thursday that his forces had targeted Ukraine with a new medium-range hypersonic ballistic missile after firing it at the city of Dnipro without carrying a nuclear warhead.
"Our engineers called it ‘Orechnik", Putin said in an address to the nation. He said the strike had targeted ‘a site of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex’ in the town of Dnipro, ‘which produces (...) missile equipment and other armaments’.
This city in central Ukraine is home to the Pivdenmach group, known in Russian as Yuzhmach, which dates back to the Soviet era.
According to Putin, this hypersonic missile is invincible, and Thursday's launch was a success. "There is currently no way of countering such weapons... The air defence systems currently available in the world and the missile defence systems created by the Americans in Europe do not intercept these missiles. This is out of the question," he insisted.
'Russia does not want peace'
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday called on the international community to "react" after Russia fired a new hypersonic ballistic missile at Ukraine.
"The world must react. For the moment, there is no strong reaction’, deplored Mr Zelensky in a message on social networks. "We must react. We must apply pressure. We have to push Russia towards real peace, which is only possible through force’.
According to Zelenskyy, this firing of a medium-range ballistic missile into Ukraine is "proof that Russia absolutely does not want peace."
"This is a clear and serious increase in the scale and brutality of this war," Zelenskyy said.
