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 following Thursday's Russian strike on a military facility in the city of Dnipro, the AP reports. President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the attack with the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was in retaliation for Ukraine's use of US and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.
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. "Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development." Testing the missile will continue, "including in combat," Putin said, per the AP. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, widely seen as having the warmest relations with the Kremlin in the European Union, echoed Moscow's talking points, suggesting the use of US-supplied weapons in Ukraine likely 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," Orbán said on state radio. "There is a strong assumption … that these missiles cannot be guided without the assistance of American personnel." Also on Friday, per the Guardian, a NATO spokesperson said, "Deploying this capability will neither change the course of the conflict nor deter NATO allies from supporting Ukraine." (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)
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