Putin claims experimental ballistic missile cannot be intercepted
President Vladimir Putin says that Russia it will keep testing the hypersonic Oreshnik missile it fired at Ukraine yesterday and begin serial production of the new system.
Putin claims the missile is immune to being intercepted by an enemy.
“I will add that there is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasize once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production,” he said.
Key events
Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban says Russia’s threat of more strikes with new weapons should be taken seriously, warning “there will be consequences”.
Yesterday, President Putin said the conflict in Ukraine was looking more and more like a “global” war and said he would not rule out attacking Western countries.
Orban warns that Russia “bases its policy and its place in the world on military force” and cherishes its status as “one of the most powerful militaries in the world, with some of the most modern and destructive weapons”
“When they say something in this matter, it should be taken at face value,” the nationalist premier said in his weekly interview on public radio.
Russia recently scaled back their red lines for using nuclear weapons, a move the United States dismissed as “irresponsible” rhetoric. However, Orban cautions that the Kremlin is not just blowing hot air.
“So I just want to say that when the Russians modify the rules for the use of their nuclear force… it is not a communication ploy, it is not a trick, it has been modified and there will be consequences,” the Hungarian leader added.
Putin claims experimental ballistic missile cannot be intercepted
President Vladimir Putin says that Russia it will keep testing the hypersonic Oreshnik missile it fired at Ukraine yesterday and begin serial production of the new system.
Putin claims the missile is immune to being intercepted by an enemy.
“I will add that there is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasize once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production,” he said.
Emine Sinmaz
A British man has pleaded guilty to an arson attack on a Ukraine-linked business and accepting pay from a foreign intelligence agency.
Jake Reeves, 23, admitted aggravated arson in relation to a fire in March at an east London warehouse belonging to a man only referred to in court as Mr X.
He pleaded guilty to an offence under the National Security Act 2023 of obtaining a material benefit from a foreign intelligence service.
Reeves, who appeared at Woolwich crown court via video link, denied a further charge under the law of engaging in preparatory conduct for an act involving serious violence and endangering life in the UK.
Reeves, from Croydon, was charged with the offences as part of the first case conducted under the new espionage legislation.
The Ukrainian military says their air defences downed 64 out of 114 Russia drones during Moscow’s latest air strike.
They add that an additional 41 drones had been “locationally lost”, probably due to signal jamming.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office accuses Russian forces of executing five Ukrainian prisoners of war during a single incident in eastern Ukraine last month.
The Prosecutor General’s Office claims that Russian troops shot and killed five unarmed Ukrainian soldiers after capturing them during an assault on their position on the 2nd of October on the outskirts of Vuhledar, a town in the east of the country.
Senior prosecutor Taras Semkiv told Ukrainian television on Friday that a war crimes investigation into the incident is underway. Russia has not commented on the allegations and has previously denied committing war crimes.
Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiga says he hopes emergency talks with Nato in Brussels next Tuesday will reach “concrete and meaningful outcomes” against Russia.
On Russia’s unprecedented attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro yesterday, Sybiga told a press conference in Kyiv: “This is a serious scaling up of the war, a serious escalation of Russian aggression”.
“Next week’s meeting will be held in the Nato-Ukraine format, and we hope for concrete and meaningful outcomes.”
Russia says Ukraine has returned 46 Russian citizens who were taken after Ukrainian forces seized a chunk of Russia’s western Kursk region in August, Reuters reports.
Kursk regional governor Alexei Smirnov wrote on his Telegram channel:
The painstaking and lengthy negotiations for the return of our fellow countrymen to their homeland have brought results.
They are receiving all necessary assistance.
Smirnov said the civilians were from the Sudzha district, which borders northeast Ukraine, and had returned via Belarus. It was not immediately clear where they had been held in Ukraine.
Russia’s human rights commissioner, Tatyana Moskalkova, published video showing families with toddlers and elderly people receiving humanitarian aid after disembarking from buses.
She said the negotiations had involved Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
UK won’t be put off supporting Ukraine, says minister
The UK will not be put off supporting Ukraine by the “irresponsible rhetoric” of Vladimir Putin, a defence minister has said.
Maria Eagle’s comments came after Sir Keir Starmer said the UK is “not at war” in relation to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Russian president Putin has said he is entitled to target the military facilities of countries which have supplied weapons to Ukraine, allowing Kyiv’s forces to strike deep inside Russia.
Eagle spoke to journalists as she opened an office for Rolls-Royce Submarines in Glasgow.
She said:
We’ve heard this kind of irresponsible rhetoric from him (Putin) before.
He’s trying to stop nations supporting Ukraine, whilst he doesn’t seem to mind that much about the support he’s getting from North Korea and other nations.
We can’t allow ourselves to be put off from supporting Ukraine, and we won’t be.
The Russian ruble has slumped to its lowest level against the US dollar since March 2022, a day after Moscow fired a hypersonic missile on Ukraine and Washington sanctioned a key Russian bank.
The Russian currency has been highly volatile throughout Moscow’s near three-year military offensive on Ukraine, reacting dramatically to developments on the battlefield and Western sanctions.
AFP reports that the central bank set its official exchange rate for the ruble at 102.58 against the US dollar, data published on its website showed, the lowest level since 24 March 2022, a month after the start of the conflict.
Summary of the day so far
It is approaching 5pm in Kyiv and 6pm in Moscow. Here are the latest developments:
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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. 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.
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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 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.”
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The Russian missile that struck the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday reached a top speed of more than 13,000km/h (8,000mph) and took about 15 minutes to reach its target from its launch, Ukraine said on Friday in its first public assessment of the new weapon.
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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.
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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. “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.
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A Russian drone attack on the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed two people and injured 12 on Friday morning, regional authorities said. 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.
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Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Friday that his country would seek “concrete outcomes” against Russia at a meeting next week with Nato representatives convening over Russia’s strike with a new hypersonic missile. “This is a serious scaling up of the war, a serious escalation of Russian aggression,” Ukrainian foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga, said at a press conference in Kyiv.
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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.”
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US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will attend a meeting of the G7 in Italy at the weekend, the state department said on Friday, amid rising tensions in the war in Ukraine. G7 leaders last Saturday reiterated a pledge to keep imposing severe costs on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine through sanctions, export controls and other measures, and vowed to support Kyiv for as long as it takes.
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Russia has sent air-defence missiles and other military technology to North Korea in return for the deployment of its troops to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, intelligence officials in South Korea have said. In a TV interview on Friday, South Korea’s top security adviser, Shin Won-sik, suggested the Kremlin had started to fulfil its side of a deal to provide the regime in Pyongyang with technology and aid as “payment” for the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to Ukraine.
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Russian forces have taken control of the settlement of Novodmytrivka in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the RIA state-owned news agency reported on Friday, citing the defence ministry. The claim has not been independently verified.
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The UK home secretary has said that “we will continue” to see “aggressive language” from Vladimir Putin after the Russian leader threatened to strike the UK. Yvette Cooper told Sky News that there has been an “aggressive, blustering tone” from Putin throughout the conflict, which she called “completely unacceptable”. Meanwhile, the UK’s foreign secretary vowed to continue to “do everything that is necessary” to help Ukraine combat Russia.
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Recent events show that there is a real risk of a global conflict breaking out, Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Friday, after Russia fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian city. “The war in the east is entering a decisive phase, we feel that the unknown is approaching,” Tusk told a teachers conference.
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Russian forces have “derailed” Ukraine’s entire military strategy for next year, Moscow’s defence minister said on Friday. In a meeting with military commanders, Russian defence minister, Andrei Belousov, said Moscow’s advance had “accelerated” in Ukraine and “ground down” Kyiv’s best units. “We have, in fact, derailed the entire 2025 campaign,” Belousov said of the Ukrainian army, speaking in a video published by the Russian defence ministry.
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North Korea has likely received more than 1m barrels of oil from Russia over an eight-month period this year in breach of UN sanctions, according to an analysis of satellite imagery published on Friday by UK-based Open Source Centre and the BBC.
The Russian missile that struck the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday reached a top speed of more than 13,000km/h (8,000mph) and took about 15 minutes to reach its target from its launch, Ukraine said on Friday in its first public assessment of the new weapon.
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Moscow struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new intermediate-range, hypersonic ballistic missile known as Oreshnik as a warning to the west against supporting Ukraine’s war effort. The attack took place with fighting in the war nearing the three-year mark and Ukraine firing longer-range missiles supplied by its western allies at targets inside Russia.
“The flight time of this Russian missile from the moment of its launch in the Astrakhan region to its impact in the city of Dnipro was 15 minutes,” the military’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The missile was equipped with six warheads: each equipped with six submunitions. The speed at the final part of the trajectory was over Mach 11.”
Mach is a measurement of supersonic speed. Mach 11 equals about 13,600 km/h.
HUR added that the weapon was likely to be from the Kedr missile complex, which deputy head, Vadym Skibitsky, told Ukrainian media is related to the Oreshnik system and was first tested in June 2021.
Skibitsky said Russia could have at least 10 more such missiles to test before they enter mass production, news agency Ukrinform reported.
Kyiv initially suggested Russia had fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, but US officials and Nato echoed Putin’s description of the weapon as an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
A British man admitted on Friday that he carried out an arson attack on a London commercial property linked to Ukraine, and that he had accepted pay from a foreign intelligence agency, in a case prosecutors have linked to Russia, reports Reuters.
Jake Reeves, 22, pleaded guilty at London’s Woolwich crown court to charges of aggravated arson on the premises belonging to a “Mr X” on an industrial estate in east London in March.
He also admitted a charge under the UK’s new National Security Act (NSA) of obtaining a material benefit from a foreign intelligence service. He denied a further charge under the NSA of engaging in preparations for an act endangering the life of a person or creating serious risk to the health or safety of the public, and prosecutors said they would not pursue that charge.
Last month another man, Dylan Earl, 20, also admitted carrying out the arson attack. He pleaded guilty to a preparatory act under the NSA, which was brought in last year to crack down on hostile activity by foreign states.
The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement when the men were charged in April that Earl’s actions were for the benefit of the Russian state. Prosecutor Duncan Penny gave no further details about the case against Reeves.
According to Reuters, three other men have also denied the aggravated arson charge, while a further suspect has yet to enter a plea. A seventh man has denied a charge of knowing about terrorist acts but failing to disclose the information to police.
A trial over those outstanding charges is due to be held in June next year. Earl and Reeves will be sentenced after that trial.
Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Friday that his country would seek “concrete outcomes” against Russia at a meeting next week with Nato representatives convening over Russia’s strike with a new hypersonic missile.
“This is a serious scaling up of the war, a serious escalation of Russian aggression,” Ukrainian foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga, said at a press conference in Kyiv, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Sybiga added that:
Next week’s meeting will be held in the Nato-Ukraine format, and we hope for concrete and meaningful outcomes.”
US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will attend a meeting of the G7 in Italy at the weekend, the state department said on Friday, amid rising tensions in the war in Ukraine.
G7 leaders last Saturday reiterated a pledge to keep imposing severe costs on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine through sanctions, export controls and other measures, and vowed to support Kyiv for as long as it takes.
The state department said Blinken would discuss issues including “conflicts in the Middle East, Russia’s war against Ukraine, Indo-Pacific security, and the ongoing crises in both Haiti and Sudan” at the gathering in Italy.
During his 23-27 November trip, Blinken also plans to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican after the G7 talks, it said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Italy holds the 2024 rotating presidency of the G7, which also includes the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Germany and the UK.
The United States believes Russia fired a never-before-fielded intermediate-range ballistic missile on Thursday in its attack on Ukraine, an escalation that analysts say could have implications for European missile defences.
Here’s what we know so far about the missile:
The US military said the Russian missile’s design was based on the design of Russia’s longer-range RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The new missile was experimental and Russia likely possessed only a handful of them, officials said.
The Pentagon said the missile was fired with a conventional warhead but that Moscow could modify it if it wanted.
“It could be refitted to certainly carry different types of conventional or nuclear warheads,” Pentagon spokesperson, Sabrina Singh, said.
Jeffrey Lewis, a non-proliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, had earlier hinted that Russia would complete the development of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) system after Washington and Berlin agreed to deploy long-range US missiles in Germany from 2026.
“The RS-26 was always [a] prime candidate,” Lewis said.
Singh said the new variant of the missile was considered “experimental” by the Pentagon. “It’s the first time that we’ve seen it employed on the battlefield … So that’s why we consider it experimental.”
US and UK sources indicated that they believed the missile fired on Dnipro was an experimental nuclear-capable, 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.
Justin McCurry
Russia has sent air-defence missiles and other military technology to North Korea in return for the deployment of its troops to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, intelligence officials in South Korea have said.
In a TV interview on Friday, South Korea’s top security adviser, Shin Won-sik, suggested the Kremlin had started to fulfil its side of a deal to provide the regime in Pyongyang with technology and aid as “payment” for the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to Ukraine.
“It has been identified that equipment and anti-aircraft missiles aimed at reinforcing Pyongyang’s vulnerable air-defence system have been delivered to North Korea,” Shin, the national security adviser to the South’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, told the broadcaster SBS.
Shin did not offer details of how intelligence officials had confirmed the arrival in North Korea of Russian military support, and North Korea and the Kremlin have not commented on his claims.
North Korea had also received “various forms of economic support” and may have acquired Russian technology for its troubled spy satellite programme, Shin said.
North Korea claimed it had put its first spy satellite into orbit in November last year after two failed attempts, but experts have questioned whether it is able to produce imagery that could be useful to the country’s military. Another satellite launch in May also ended in failure.
Experts believe North Korea agreed to send troops to the western Kursk border region in return for military technology, ranging from surveillance satellites to submarines, as well as possible security guarantees from Moscow.
When they met in Pyongyang in June, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a mutual aid agreement that obliged both countries to provide military assistance “without delay” in the case of an attack on the other.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) has spoken to a resident of Dnipro after Russia’s first launch of a nuclear-capable mid-range ballistic missile at the city of on Thursday.
Vladimir Riga, 66, was on his way to work when he saw “an explosion”. He said the attack damaged a rehabilitation centre and AFP saw workers boarding up the windows of the damaged building after the attack.
Asked if it marked a new turn in the conflict and if he feared an escalation, Riga said, “of course I am afraid. Anything can happen”.
New US sanctions on Moscow may shut down the only way European customers can pay for Russian gas, increase volatility on Russia’s FX market and push Moscow closer to Beijing’s orbit, Russian economists said on Friday, reports Reuters.
Washington imposed new sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank on Thursday that prevent the state-controlled lender from handling any new energy-related transactions that touch the US financial system. The US also targeted about 50 other Russian banks and the Bank of Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS).
Hungary and Slovakia, both of which have long-term contracts with Russian energy company Gazprom, are studying the changes, according to Reuters. Russian deputy energy minister, Pavel Sorokin, declined to comment when asked by Reuters if Gazprombank would continue receiving payments from European clients.
“EU payments for energy resources through Gazprombank will likely become impossible at the end of 2024,” Sinara Investment Bank analysts said, according to Reuters.
The sanctions included a wind-down period for transactions involving Gazprombank until 20 December and for those related to the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project in Russia’s far east until 28 June 2025.
The Kremlin said on Friday the sanctions were an attempt by Washington to hinder Russian gas exports, but a solution would be found. Gazprombank said the sanctions would not impact its banking operations, but did not respond to Reuter’s questions on gas payment solutions.
In March 2022, Moscow demanded that countries hostile to Russia pay for gas supplies under a scheme that involves the conversion of hard currency into roubles. Buyers could open two accounts at Gazprombank, one in roubles and one in foreign currency.
Now, they will need to find another intermediary.
The US has authorised transactions related to energy with certain exceptions for a dozen Russian financial institutions until 30 April 2025. Some analysts say Gazprombank could be added to that list, reports Reuters.
Sweden will not be intimidated by Russia’s provocations, defence minister Pal Jonson has said after president Vladimir Putin hinted at strikes on Western countries supplying weapons to Ukraine.
Jonson told reporters at a joint press conference in Stockholm with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov:
The Russian escalation and provocation that we’ve been noticing recently is an attempt to scare us from supporting Ukraine, and that will fail. This will not happen.
